At age 14, Brian won a speed typing contest and his love for computers and technology was born. After years of playing The Oregon Trail, creating his highschool newspaper in Adobe Pagemaker, and using Napster, Brian pursued a Business Information Systems Degree.
Prior to speaking, he worked for nine years at the Department of Defense where he managed a global team who deployed collaboration and cybersecurity solutions across all branches of the military – which required him to maintain the highest civilian security clearance. He then pursued his dream job as a technology evangelist for a booming cloud-computing startup, helping companies embrace the rate of change and new ways to innovate.
Brian is currently the Founder of iSocialFanz, which has helped launch digital and influencer strategies with the world’s most iconic brands like Dell, EMC, Adobe, IBM, UFC, Applebee’s, and SAP.
Brian has been recognized as a Top 20 Digital Transformation Influencer; a Top 50 Most-Mentioned User by CMOs on Twitter, and a Top 25 Social Business Leader of the Future by The Economist. His followers on social media and podcast downloads rank in the hundreds of thousands, resulting in Brian being hired an influencer for 19 of the Fortune 50 companies.
Name: Brian Fanzo, Founder
Company: iSocialFanz
URL: https://www.isocialfanz.com/
Transcript of the Conversation
Jordan Smith
What’s up everybody? Welcome to the iProv Made podcast where we teach you how to run a profitable practice. I’m Jordan Smith, VP of Sales and Marketing with iProv and co host along with RJ Martino, president ceo of iProv. And I guess founder of the iProv Made Podcast what’s up RJ?
RJ Martino
Hey, Jordan, how are you?
Jordan Smith
I’m doing good. Hey, I am super excited to bring everybody our guests for today. Brian fans Oh, RJ tell us tell us a little bit about Brian.
RJ Martino
Brian fans Oh came to us by referral because he speaks at every conference ever. And I mean, he speaks so much that this is just like another day for him. You know, a lot of times guests get get get a little flustered that they’re going to be on him. This is just another day in the office for Brian Brian’s a virtual keynote speaker and a digital futurist and he always love hearing titles like digital futurist. So there, he’s going to talk about how that came to be. He’s going to talk about what that means. And he’s going to talk about how you should change your perspective on how you see technology and the way that it impacts you know, your practice your business, and things like that.
Jordan Smith
Yeah, and just a way to think about how to promote your own brand. You know, every, every organization, whether you’re a doctor or a CPA firm, or whoever you are out there listening. You know, every organization should be in the business of sales and marketing, and Brian’s gonna talk a lot about his perspective on that. And there’s a ton of good takeaways. I mean, we could have talked to Brian for half the day. So without further ado, let’s kick it off. Brian fans, everybody.
RJ Martino
Welcome to the iProv Made podcast where we help you build a more profitable practice. I’m here with my great co host, JORDAN SMITH. Hey, Jordan.
Jordan Smith
Hey. RJ How are you?
RJ Martino
Dude, I’m excited, I’ve got a friend of mine ready to rock your socks off. So, let’s jump right into it. You know, I always like to start this before we introduce our great guests and kind of talk about our thoughts behind how to build a profitable practice. And it is a very simple process. The first one is, like in any other healthcare world is listen to what are the symptoms of the problems you have. And that’s what we do, we usually sit down and we just hear a bunch of symptoms of, you know, physicians or physician adjacent companies talk about problems. The second thing is make sure that we’re working with someone who is willing to be completely accountable for the problem. We say the you know, the bad news is this is all your fault. The good news is this is all your fault. You know, you’ve got the ability to change any of these symptoms. The third thing is triage and the problem really digging into what those symptoms are asking, you know, Question behind the question. Once we triage the problem, it usually falls into three different buckets. Brian, the first one is usually they don’t have a vision for the future. And so we help often just building out what the vision of their future looks like. Because without a vision, the people will perish. Once you figure out what your vision looks like, and you know, there’s a whole process for that, we then build the strategy on how to build that vision and make it a reality. We build the tactics so that we know exactly what we’re going to do day in and day out. It’s the you know, the workout plan. And then after we built those things, we talked about how to keep accountability within your employees within your vendors. And that usually means recurring meetings, scorecards, quarterly meetings, whatever it is, but that’s kind of our thought process on on how to build a profitable and the last thing is, you’ve got to work all that out. So the very last step is is in engaging your team. And that is getting the work done. And so when I talk to people I like to figure out where these people fall into place. And so I am excited to bring Brian fans Oh to our podcast today. Jordan, do you want to talk about Brian fans Oh, and where he fits at in this overall thought process?
Jordan Smith
Yeah, we’re really excited to have Brian on. Brian welcome keynote speaker digital futurist talks to you know, businesses brands about how to move their organization forward. Brian, welcome so much. Tell us start us off by just telling us what’s a digital futurist.
Brian Fanzo
Thanks for having me excited to be here. You know, you for me a digital futures was one of those things that it was actually my speaker agent kind of kind of dawn the label and was like, Hey, this is what you should be talking about. And I’ve always been someone that’s been proud to have no niche. I’m a big believer that if you have a niche or a niche, you should Only double down on it, make it your thing, but if you don’t have one, I’m kind of like the poster boy for how you can still succeed without without having that or while you’re still discovering that. But you know, from, you know, my background, I think rather unique and where I’ve, where I sit today in my, you know, winter college for Business Information Systems, Computer Science, ended up getting a job at UPS actually delivering packages at a college because I couldn’t find a job in it. I’m here in Northern Virginia where I live, but I got my first break, as you know, into the US government, I had no background and I started working in a cyber security helpdesk. That was really supporting active duty military and their cybersecurity solutions and this was 2000, late 2004-2005 and way early in the cybersecurity game of what was going on. And I like to say my my world kind of changed on Friday afternoon when the kind of general manager of the help desks that we came in pretty much came in and said, Hey, anyone here want to raise their hand and volunteer to go to Korea on Monday? And I happen to have my hand up first. And he called my name and was like, Brian, do you have a passport? I was like, No, I was like, I’ve been on a cruise like in the Caribbean. Like, he’s like, you’re prepared to go teach the course that we were troubleshooting in Korea. And I was like, No, but I can promise by Monday, I’ll be ready. And it’s a long flight. And that Saturday, I went to down to Washington, DC and got a same day passport, which was like a six hour process back then in 2004.
RJ Martino
anymore. Is there such thing as the same day passport? I believe there is.
Brian Fanzo
But I believe you had to have one before. I don’t think you can do one now have having never had one. I think if you’ve had one previously, you can but I’m not sure if you can do it the way that I did it back then. Which was you know, even now thinking about it was kind of wild. And that was Saturday. And then Sunday. You know, I told my wife at the time it was I had no kids and I said hey, I’m flying. On a 13 and a half hour flight to Seoul, Korea, taking a two and a half hour high speed train down to Daegu. And I’m going to teach, you know, 35 you know, active duty military members on a cyber security tool, that I’ve only really been working on it as a helpdesk person for about six months. So I spent that entire flight learning the manual going through all the different processes, you know, and then kind of dove into that experience. And, and for me, a lot of that, you know, I wasn’t a great student in college in college, but I loved college, I played college hockey, I was president of my fraternity and very active in the college world, but I wasn’t a great student. And a lot of that has to do with I can probably segue into being diagnosed ADHD at 31 years old, not being diagnosed earlier on in my life. But so for me, it was, you know, when I took on this challenge of being an instructor, and it was part of this, this my idea of like, Hey, I’m gonna try it out and see what I can do. And the The short metal pieces. I taught the five day class on the flight back. I landed in Atlanta at the time, and I had an international Blackberry that they had provided me and I, I turned on my international Blackberry. And there was an email from our superior government, to my boss kind of see seeing me and pretty much said, you know, the feedback and information from that course, is unlike anything we’ve seen for that course from the previous instructors. And if you’re willing to have Brian do more of those, we’ll add four more classes a month to our our calendar for the rest of the year to have Brian take that over. And I can tell you as I got back into the office that following week, and I was kind of promoted three levels up, I all of a sudden got employees that were direct reporting to me, I, the person that had actually hired me was actually technically under me in the chain of command. And I ran with that role for about eight years. I grew into a team of 32 people. I traveled during that time to 56 countries, every US military base outside of the United States, teaching courses as well as briefing the different leaders on the value of what we were deploying in cybersecurity. And really, my job was to help get the different branches of military as well as government to share cybersecurity policies amongst themselves, like getting the Navy to share their cyber security policy with the army. And I like to say like, it taught me really how hard collaboration could truly be in that in that piece of it. And also at the same time, this was very early days cybersecurity, and I was very lucky to have a great boss that was a great reverse mentor for me. I was, you know, I was labeled oftentimes as like the only non gray haired person on our team, which then I got to be get my first speaking role he sent me to training for speaking and it was, yeah, it was a path I never would have thought I would have jumped on but it’s one that I was was truly thankful to be on. I think I said, I did it for nine years, after nine years, I was actually getting promoted. And we were switching contracts. And I kind of had this epiphany or this…
RJ Martino
Before, before before. You know, it’s just amazing because you think about the serendipity of you saying yes to something that, you know, in, in any career in anybody’s life. There’s a big part of you that probably was scared of the unknown. Oh, yes. But also at the same time, like just looking forward to the adventure. And we kind of lose that as we, as we get older and get a little more comfortable. And now we got the excuse of Yeah, but my kids that are home and none of that would have happened, had you not just said yes. And taken on the the challenge and that’s what you know, for me, a lot of leadership is not that we’re, you know, we’re born and you know, all of a sudden we come out we look like Peyton Manning and we’re directing the field. A lot. Sometimes it’s just nobody else wanted to say yes to this challenge. And I’m in, you know, in that situation, you’re to sit where they said, Who wants to go and your hand was first to go up? A lot of times, it’s nobody else’s hands go up. And you know, I’m the only one who raised their hand and said, Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it. If we make one. I’ll do it. That’s what like so now hear that an avalanche of opportunity came after that is just incredible.
Brian Fanzo
Yeah. And it’s really what I can attribute to so much of what I do not write the book that I’m writing that will be out very soon in the podcast that I most recently launched is called Press the Damn Button. And it’s technically in that same essence of it’s, you know, it’s really what’s worked for me in my career, in the sense of, you know, hey, I’m gonna volunteer. I I joked early on that the reason I put my hand up so fast, was I didn’t like the 6am to 3pm shift I was on and I was willing to take anything that was not going into Washington DC at 6am to 3pm. But like that to me, you know, embodies a lot of the world we’re living in today, right where it’s not like the adage of faking it till you make it rather, it’s, hey, let’s dive in and figure out what works and put the, you know, the doors in the Lamborghini as you’re driving in or, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use. And I think that’s kind of the beauty of kind of the space that I’ve kind of fallen into now because like I left that government role, you know, after nine years, and it was really one of those things where my during a promotion ceremony, the boss was like you’re the youngest Senior VP we’ve ever had, we’ve had to rewrite some of our things because Brian didn’t have a master’s degree and we wanted to get him in this role. And, and I got this feeling was like, I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. And nine years in the government nine years doing when I was doing cybersecurity was taking off. It was one of those pivotal moments for me was like, I either stay here and do this for the rest of my life and really do it well. Or I can chase this dream that I’ve had for since I was younger, which was really to be a technology evangelist, which was modeled after Guy Kawasaki, which is what he was for Steve Jobs and Apple. And so I ended up taking that like I kind of did the another version of raising your hand and I decided to leave that role give up my security clearance. And I went from, you know, government cybersecurity to a very sexy industry called the Data Center. And I say that as tongue in cheek as you could possibly be. There’s probably no more technology, more, I’d say boring and kind of out of touch in the tech space. But it was a role that really excited me was a startup, they are moving into the cloud computing innovation space. And it was super interesting. I was, you know, I worked for an enterprise tech company ba systems for the government. And then I went work for this startup and we ended up hiring 12 new hires a week for almost two years, I was employee 256. I remember that because, you know, computer geek, and when you get your employee number, it was 256. I was like, that’s pretty interesting. And I was there for two years in 10 days, and we had over 600 employees when I left. And I was actually kind of given that role that I always had. Thought I wanted, you know, direct reports to the CEO at a dotted line to the CMO and a dotted line to the CIO. And I kind of played in this evangelist role. And I am so thankful for that role. And it taught me a lot, I got to speak at a lot of events got a lot, I do a lot of things with giant, you know, big brands on helping them move into the cloud, but also understand how not to disrupt the legacy systems in the world that they had built. And then the startup actually got acquired, and they pretty much came in. It was, you know, CenturyLink was the company acquiring them and they pretty much came in and said, What is an evangelist? How do you not have like, KPIs or sales quotas is like, I think today needs to be your last day. And I like to say that was my foray. That was my kick into entrepreneurship, which is now a little over five years, it was five years now owning my own business as of last month, and yeah, that’s kind of where I you know, kind of got kicked in the world I was. I had done so much speaking and doing a lot of things but I as I went back on my own When I started getting rebuilding what I was doing, I had had a podcast, a couple online shows, I was building my social media audience. And then, you know, I like to say like, for me, this kind of was all in this idea of kind of finding my fit finding where I told my story. And I like to kind of say, like, you know, for me, a pivotal day, like, the raising the hand was a pivotal day in my early on my career, but one of the pivotal days for me was actually November 2, 2013. And it’s actually you know, my mom, I’ll give credit to I’m a mama’s boy, not afraid to admit it. And my mom had kind of called me out and said, Brian, I see what you’re doing on social media. And I see that you’re kind of playing in the space but and she’s she made a comment, like, I don’t see you wearing a hat, and I don’t see you really being the person that has found success. And she’s like, I’m just curious, are you being yourself with what you’re sharing online? And of course, you know, 2013 I’m 30 years old. I’m like, yeah, mom, of course, like you don’t know what you’re talking about mom like this social media. It’s before you know, and I hung up the phone and I remember, I kind of sat there and I went into my the mirror in my bathroom at the time. And I wrote just the words, be yourself and very big, bold letters with a sharpie on the mirror. I don’t recommend using a sharpie on a mirror because that’s very hard to get out. But the premise was that day I, I went from looking at social and digital and the world online from trying to say or put out what I thought other people wanted to hear. And I started sharing kind of my story and, and I’m very blessed now. You know, I’ve been been to 76 countries total. I speak at about 65 to 70 events a year of brands and businesses and industries of all walks of life. And I really my focus as a futurist is to help, help us embrace change help us see the synergy between digital innovation and humanity. So I talk a lot about empathy. I talk about building your business through social listening and understanding your customer needs. So RJ I really liked the way you set that up starting off because I was nodding in, you know, not only in how we have to build businesses and look at this space, but a lot of what I help leaders do online, is what they do really great, you know, traditionally, but we have kind of a disconnect or a roadblock or maybe stuck in our ways. And so that’s kind of been my, you know, interesting journey to where I’m at now, and I’m very blessed. I get to do what I love, although, you know, COVID definitely disrupted that. But I’m, I’m now doing all virtual presentations. I’ve done 46 virtual presentations since March 30. So I can say I’m all in on on virtual at the moment. But yeah, that’s, that’s my world. I’m also a proud dad of three little girls, and I kind of teased in there. Another piece that really changed a lot of my life was being diagnosed ADHD at 31. And it’s something I talk a lot about on stage. It’s something I’m a big advocate for across my social media and kind of the brands I’m working with as well. So yeah, that’s that’s that’s that’s it in a nutshell.
RJ Martino
I’d like to talk more about that. I always think it’s interesting because ADHD people are often branded as the problem child in the class. And then we see lots of high achievers in the ADH world. Even in the healthcare space. I mean, there, there are lots of physicians that have succeeded with a diagnosis like that too, but kind of before we get in that, you know, thinking about the change you’re trying to impart on people, you know, when, when you’re on stage, when you’re talking to those people talk about maybe the mindset shifts that you like them, maybe they came in and they start at point A and after they listen to you, you’ve moved their mindset, their thought, or even their actions over to point B. Like, what does that perspective change usually look like in lots of the conferences?
Brian Fanzo
Well, you hit it home right there. It’s a perspective change, right? I’m not oftentimes asking someone to believe in something they don’t believe in or, you know, I one of the things I asked Let’s take an open mind. Now I will tell you, I’m a big kind of believer in playing into my strengths playing into the psychology of different things. And so, you know, I wear a backwards hat and bright colored shoes, usually a T shirt on the stage. And I’ve done that in front of, you know, the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’ve done that with, you know, executive leadership brands that, you know, I’ve been an influencer for 17 of the Fortune 100 companies that are out there. And part of that also, you know, I get a very polarizing, you know, views sometimes I get someone that will judge a book by a cover, and all of that is very deliberate for me and I always like to say, I get to bring people on a journey from like, oh God, another millennial that you know, is wearing his backwards shoes and his hat he, you know, he does he need a participation trophy. Is he gonna whine about something? You know, and I kind of play into that and then I kind of bring him on the journey to really what you will a lot of my career and I kind of mentioned this before, but you know, I had 34 people that ended up working directly for me across my team. We are managing You know, a $9 million a year budget for the group that we were deploying. And the context of that is the first 30 of those employees were all older than I was. Because in cybersecurity, there wasn’t even a major no one was going to school for that, at the time, and not to mention you had to get a security clearance. And in the early 2000s, they hadn’t really loosened the parameters around security clearances. So like, you know, drugs, a lot of things that we’re like very hardcore that you had to be like in, never had been in the proximity of made it very hard for a certain demographic to kind of get into that space. And so my first 29 employees were older than I was, I also, you know, kind of segue into my, you know, I was a fraternity president, my sophomore year, in college, the fraternity president we had actually got sick, and I had to rewrite the bylaws so that I could be the president as a sophomore. And I like to say like, even that little experience of learning how to, you know, respect experience and realize that leadership doesn’t mean I know everything I have to lead from the front end. And you know, a lot of these things that I’ve kind of played it throughout my life. And so I try to kind of connect those dots with the audience on where we’re going and the value of digital and virtual. And, you know, a big piece for me is that what I’m a big believer in that, for us to change today, it’s not for us to believe that what we’ve been doing is wrong, or has been wrong. Rather, it’s everything that we’ve been doing over these past many years. That brings us to a point that allows us and enables us to change right and so for, I think, for a lot of people when they hear when I tell them to tell their stories on social media or why they need to have you know, a digital footprint or the you know, the value of taking their business and being much more human and real on you know, what your first impression was, like I even talked about why I believe every business should have an I don’t know page on their website, because we already know that nobody’s perfect and nobody knows everything. If you’re willing to admit what you don’t know. It’ll, it actually allows you to be more, you know, it adds validity to what you do know, and when someone, you know, is willing to admit that online and it’s definitely a change in thought process. But for me, I think one of the big perspective changes is trying to relate not only the different examples, but seeing getting people just to re ask questions that maybe they asked themselves three years ago, five years ago, and say, hey, let’s ask it again, in today’s world, and I think, you know, COVID, and what we’ve kind of gone through in 2020, that’s probably more important than anything else, it’s coming back and saying, okay, we might be we might have made these business decisions based on the the these different variables in our in our business world, but what are those variables look like today? And then what are you know, what are other people doing? What are the things that we want to do and I and I like the way you set it up to like, I would say the the number one piece that I talk about is we want at people today, one access to leaders access to business, access to the people that you know, we’re working with that we’re trusting because I truly do believe every business is in the business of trust. But I believe if you don’t start with defining what success looks like, you’ll never be successful, you’ll never, you’ll never feel as though what you’re doing is actually going to get you to the place that you want. And so that’s where really I tried to get, you know, open that perspective to new possibilities, but also help them kind of redefine what success looks like and then kind of work backwards from there. And it’s exciting. I’ve, I worked at a pet influencer events, where there was actually more animals in the audience than there were people. And I will also say there was also more millionaires in the audience than there were anything else these were all like, very high, like multi, like couple of the dogs on Instagram have 12 million followers, right. And I was helping their their owners understand what their role was on social and I’ve also, you know, spoke at, you know, large healthcare events. I spoke at two of the largest government events South by Southwest, you know, I get to speak so for me, it’s so interesting because I get to help open that perspective in not only where the future is, but also kind of redefine you know what success looks like today.
RJ Martino
Now we, we talk a lot about accountability and we make sure that people are, are willing to take complete ownership of these problems. You know, how do you and I know you… There’s some people, and they say, Oh, yeah. What’s your thought process on that? How do you respond to that? I’ll let you take it from there. What are your thoughts on guys that just want someone else to do it?
Brian Fanzo
So you know, I’m a big believer in there is definitely power in outsourcing and bringing in people to, to do what you you aren’t either familiar with or you’re not comfortable doing. But I think one of the things that we kind of sometimes missing this is the, the importance of self awareness, not only in our business, but in ourselves into hey, what are the things that I love to do and what are the things that I can help make this work and I think, in this world we’re living in now I know I’ve been a big believer in transparency, as you might have noticed, just even mentioning ADHD and, you know, and and if you would have asked me five years ago if ADHD was something I would talk about publicly, the answer would been no, it wasn’t something that I was like, hey, this is I’m aware, it is a badge of honor. You know, I had a moment with an a mom in the audience after an event that was just so compelling that I was like, if I could impact her just to one person by simply mentioning, you know, being medicated on ADHD, then I’d be willing to tell the world right, and that’s kind of where that came. But the the piece that I think is most interesting is that today’s consumers, today’s audiences are demanding transparency, there no longer no transparency is no longer a nice to have. And you know, and in the healthcare space, this is a very interesting one when it comes to understanding data and privacy. You know, my background in cybersecurity. I’m very familiar, especially with the US government, on you know, privacy regulations and understanding that kind of like that balance. And I think even when we look at how we’re rewriting the way that we share data, right, I have an Apple watch that I actually wear on a everyday basis. And I give that data to my doctor for my ADHD. And part of that has to do with, I want to give him as much data as I can now I’d assign 77 pieces of paper and, you know, it felt like I was, you know, hours of signing away my world. But at the same time, there’s this kind of interesting spot where we’re in now where I believe too many are, are maybe outsourcing maybe not, maybe not giving enough priority to certain aspects that are the front of their business. And in today’s world, like trust is that is that key, right? I don’t care if it’s, you know, in your office to where it’s online to it’s at a networking event, maybe at the local pub, that trust is essential. And I think it’s really hard to build trust, it’s even harder to maintain trust. And I would actually argue that it’s probably the hardest thing to do is to scale trust and scale at at at a range where you can actually meet the demands of what you’re hoping to accomplish, but it’s very easy to lose trust. So I think one of the mistakes that in that, in that example, RJ is that when we look at when we’re outsourcing or we’re having someone bring in their what risk are you taking on in that jeopardizing the trust and the credibility that you’ve been building? And I think we sometimes kind of forget that. And we’re like, well, if they mess up, we can blame it on the marketing company. But today, that’s no longer the case. And we’ve seen brands and businesses of all shapes and sizes, that too often, one says, Hey, I’m sorry, we messed up. Please trust us. We love our community. And in today’s day and age, if you don’t invest in your community, and build that trust, prior to that mistake, and let’s let’s be bold, everyone’s going to make the mistake there’s going to be you’re going to be hacked, the transparency may happen, employee is going to make a mistake. I always use this as my cybersecurity nugget that we always talk about cybersecurity and getting hacked. But the number one threat in cybersecurity for every single business in the world today is not China. It’s not the hackers. It’s not anonymous. It’s actually employees. It’s called insider threat, it’s an employee accidentally or on purpose, sharing data or information that exposes the company. And if we think about that, if that’s a guarantee and trust is so important, we have to make sure that we are building that trust long before the guarantee mistake or exposure actually happens. I think that’s that’s usually where I try to help brands kind of look at that and and prioritize what they’re currently outsourcing.
Jordan Smith
Well, let’s talk about that for a second Brian, because I know our listeners out there. You know, trust is, especially in this industry, it’s more important that you you know, your doctors got to have trust a lot more than your mechanic or any other type of organization and I know that the the Press The Damn Button, the book and the podcast and everything that you’re doing. Whenever you talk about that you talk about ways to create trust. So for those listeners out there, talk about how they build up kind of that trust collateral with their audience? What what are some, what are some tips? What are some things that you tell owners or practices whenever you’re talking to those folks at all the conferences that you speak, but what are kind of some tactical tips that they can take away?
Brian Fanzo
I love this, I love this question. It’s a great one to go down this pace. I think one of the things that we’re looking at today, right, there’s content is everywhere, and we see content is king, we’re doing a podcast, like the idea that like kind of putting things out there. But one of the things that I think we struggle with oftentimes is, okay, is this a marketing activity? Is this a sales activity? You know, how are we using our data that’s on our website? How are we making sure that we don’t violate any, you know, privacy laws or data that we have in our own space? Well, the place that I always like to start is that nobody will ever say that you’re helping me too much, or you’re providing me too much value, or you’re saving me too much time. Like no one ever. We’re never gonna say that. So when you’re looking at building trust out of starting out, one of the most important place to start is to how can I just help solve people’s problems? Maybe it’s not directly aligned in your direct business path, but it maybe has a shadow one. I actually Have a great healthcare example. That is, I was speaking at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. I used to live in Phoenix for a long while. And I stayed in contact with a gentleman that had seen me speak. And after going back and forth, we got on the phone and he let me know. He’s like, hey, I’m a dentist, I own a couple different locations in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s like, I’m a very high end dentistry, catering to a very high end clientele. And he’s like, I want to start a podcast. And I can tell you my very first thought was like, a podcast about teeth? Like he was like, what? Like, I was like, it had that moment where it’s like, what did I say that I, cuz sometimes I will say statements like, I believe every business can use a podcast and I was like, What did I say? What did I do and what he was very open. He’s like, here’s what I know. He’s like, I know that, you know, it’s no one’s no one’s searching or looking. My clientele aren’t ultimately looking for me as the dentist but what I’ve found is that there is a network of businesses that cater to a very similar crowd that I would love to amplify their message. And what he tenderly created was a lifestyle podcast about things in Scottsdale, Arizona, that allow you to invest in your own personal development. So it was a, we went from a tanning salon to a spa, to a nail, you know and there was multiple different businesses and his whole thing was interviewing them. And he opened it up with hey, I’m a dentist at the end to get a little bit call to action on like, what his dentistry was, but it not once it was about teeth, it was about amplifying these businesses that were aligned and, and a couple of episodes went in deep into like, some of the people why they started their business and the other businesses that they were inspired to, and it started to build this network. And, and this was about four years ago, and about two years ago, he contacted me and we got on the phone. He just said, you know, I’m retiring from what I’m doing, but I just wanted to give you kind of validation on the back end of this. He’s like we’ve actually paused our podcast. I was like, Wait, where’s the validation coming on this, he’s like, our, our stream of new clients is so deep, that we have a waiting list that’s almost a year long now. Because we’ve been exposed and put into Country Club conversations. We’ve had these ideas where there were people that we would have never got in front of. And I like to say I won’t I won’t even take credit for that. It was a definitely a brainstorming idea between the two of us that we came up with the idea and he’s the one that selected all the businesses, but I think that’s a great place to think, right? Like, it’s not really about like this, you know, building trust through, you know, how great you are, right? And, and that that’s a that’s a piece of it as well. And I’d like to say one of the the other pieces of this is that I think it’s extremely important for business leaders and businesses as a whole to tell their story. But the way that we have to think about that is you have to tell your story by letting people in to understand who you are as a business while shining the light on them. So it’s not and this is where we, some people think well Brian, I don’t want to come across as bragging, or pounding my chest or telling people why my practice is the best or why, you know, and, and the way that I always like to kind of situate that to help kind of facilitate that is that if you when you’re talking about your business, the things you’ve done the past, if you’re doing it from a place of education, telling people how you did something, why you did something, and you’re bringing them along with you on the journey, it will never come across as if you have that, you know, your voted in number one practice into 2019. And no one else is it will always come across as, hey, together, we’re learning. And so I think that’s a that’s a beautiful way to kind of approach this idea and, and I think this also comes into this idea of like, how do I start to gradually, you know, build that rapport and like you said, this is a very trust business. It’s a very, you know, everything from reviews to word of mouth, even switching practices, right. I, for me, that was a big thing after going through my divorce and having to go and get my own and an NDA, figuring out what I wanted. And I remember like, I mean, I did a lot of Twitter polls and surveys saying, hey, who should I sign up for with with health care now as an entrepreneur on my own and, and I really went into like, tapping into my entrepreneur leadership network. And I can tell you that there’s such a difference between someone saying, Hey, this is who I work with, versus hey, this is my doctor and I love them because of this, and most of the time and has to do with a lot of these other characteristics around those different pieces.
Jordan Smith
Well, that’s a great point. And it’s like, you know, the same that the example that you gave is great because it ties back really well to what RJ was talking about earlier. As far as you know, setting the vision first, you know, and then from there taking ownership of the issue. You know, if you if you don’t have to find a different way to put yourself out there and like you said, express your why your why is often way more important than the what if you can get people aligned with why you do what you do. They’re going to buy into the what easy. So speaking of that a little bit you talked you mentioned something there that I know you talked a lot about which is importance of people in organizations kind of, you know, sharing their story. So for the listeners out there who so far like, I love this, I love the energy. I love everything he’s talking about. How do you typically work with those folks? Is that, you know, who do you look for? Who do you like to work with? You know, step us through that process.
Brian Fanzo
Yeah. So for me a lot of times, you know, it’s funny I for a lot of the big businesses that I’ve worked with their leadership, I always like to say for some reason I like, I like the most unsexy of brands and, and businesses and helping them tell a story, right, like, the three letter, three letter fortune 500 Enterprise technology company, it starts with an “I”, you know, like, that’s been my client for six years, right. And I love working with them because it was, you know, one of the surveys we did with IBM was we were talking to Millennials and Gen Z and majority of them didn’t know IBM was still in business. And the ones that did thought it was only the company that owned Watson that was on Jeopardy, right like that, like literally the parameter and it was a shell shock. For a company that promoted themselves as being in business for, you know, whatever, 60-85 years, whatever that piece was. And so for me when I, when I look at this, you know, I think one of the big pieces that really stands out is that I’ve found so much value in working with entrepreneurs, leaders, business owners, that you know, have that pride, that passion for what they’re doing already. Right, that that’s, to me is the is the greatest place to start because it’s not about pulling the story, or you know, and part of it comes into, you know, and my dad was a business owner, not in the healthcare space, he actually was a candy business owner, he owned a peanut brittle company that he owned for many years throughout. And recently it sold to Mars candy, and one of the things my dad had always kind of like, established was all these moments where like, what worked for him and I think for for business owners that are out there today, practice owners, people that like there’s the way that you talk about your business, with your friends, with your significant other with your kids, when you’re on an airplane sitting next to I want to making small talk when we used to be able to fly, that, like, those conversations are truly what worked really well online. We have a tendency to, to not do that. Right. We, we as soon as we go online, we’re like, Okay, how do I market? How do I sell? Okay, this is LinkedIn, it’s professional, therefore, it should be my resume, which last time I checked, no one’s hires, anyone a doc, you know, based simply on a resume, right? And, and even changing that language. And I think a lot of this to me, when I’m working with them is kind of breaking that down. I always say, like, try to record yourself, the next time you’re talking to someone about what you do. And then just look back and say, Wow, these are the examples I use. These are the like, I didn’t talk about hey, this is these are this is my perfect client. I said, these are the problems I like to solve or this is the reason I expanded my practice to these to this one community because I saw the need in this community. And I went after like, and I think that’s a that’s a piece that is really, really vital and kind of that discovery. And so I that helps us kind of define what this the success of telling your story is online. And then really the next piece of that journey is trying to quantify tangible goals that are measurable, that can help you achieve that, right? And I think that’s a big one. Because we oftentimes, like, Well, I know what success is, I need to go boil the ocean or I need to change the world, right? And then and, and for me, empathy is a big one on this one, I talk a lot about that. Even a decade, two chapters in the book to empathy, because I think we were like, okay, I want to make I want to help make the world a more empathetic place. And we’re like, that’s, we’re all we we sit there and we, but then we look at it like, Well, where do I start with that? Like, how do I, how do I make them? Like who do I have to like, how many people do I have to talk to to impact and what I challenge back on that is that the best place to start and making the world a more empathetic place is actually yourself, allowing people to be empathetic towards you. The more transparent the more open you are, allows the people around you to be empathetic towards you, to relate with you to connect with your vulnerabilities and all of a sudden, if we eat to inspire one more person to be more open to allow more people to be empathetic to them, we start to make that groundswell. And so that’s usually where I started defining success, mapping these kind of tangible goals. And let’s face it in the digital virtual world, and I know for many we, I’ve been preaching and trying to help people see that this is where we need to go. COVID kind of just kicked everybody there. And as much as might people in my community were like, Brian, you must be so happy. I was like, I’m not a big fan of forcing change. Because I know when people are forced to change is me a very unhappy, you know, short term, you know, experience. But if we look at where we’re at now, right, we’ve been, we’ve been forced to adapt to this new world we’re in at the moment. But I think if we take a step back, and we realize that we have this beautiful opportunity to shape the future that we want to work in shape the future that we want to build our brand in, because we’re all in this new post, what we’re not there yet, but a post COVID world of kind of remapping everything from how we work where we work, the things that matter in our lives, you know, I, I travel, you know, for me, I travel a little over 200,000 miles a year, you know, 76 countries and the the four months that I’ve been down are the most, I’ve been home since I was in college. So since 2003 I because I’ve traveled my entire career and, you know, little things that are changing. And so, for me when I look at, like a lot of the things that were here is, and this is my kind of my plea is that I think the greatest time to embrace change, to do things different to put yourself out there is right now we are extremely forgiving. We’re all kind of figuring this all out as we go. You know, we’ve seen really bad virtual events. I think every person’s been on a bad zoom call where someone can’t find the mute button, or they only find a mute button, or you know that
Jordan Smith
that awkward first 10 seconds when somebody is connected to audio and you’re like do I stare at him? Do I pretend to write something over here?
Brian Fanzo
Where do I look? Should I mute my button like how do I act as if I don’t see them coming on or like or like oh Do they know that their username is you know, is their kids like nickname for them, you know, whatever it may be. And I think that’s kind of the beauty of where we’re at now. And, you know, I’m a big believer in that, together, we can shape this and that and like the saying I’ve been using is like, we got this, like, we together are going to get through this. And we’re going to shape this new normal and, and or just new future. But I think this also comes into us having to ask the hard questions, again, like you said, be accountable for the things that we want. And also, when if there’s things that you want to accomplish, and you’re not sure what will work, right, like, should I do video? Should I create audience I could have a podcast? Do I need to update my website with more video pictures or these questions? The only way you will know is if you try it, right like in this space right now. Like you won’t know what works until you do it. You won’t know what doesn’t work until you do it. And we are living right now in the best time to do that.
Jordan Smith
Well, let’s go down that route for listeners real quick because there’s I love that principle. And I think that’s great. I want to encourage everybody out there just to start trying stuff. But one of the things we get a lot of questions about from our listeners and in our clients or just people that we talk to every day, RJ and I, through iProv the marketing company, is about how to track progress. And I know that you’ve got a really good principle that you talk about all the time, which is test, tweak and repeat. So let’s talk a little bit about you know, alright, cool. Let’s start a podcast. Let’s do a video series about common health questions. Let’s, for listeners out there, what are some things that you should say, hey, you know, here’s, here’s, here’s the metrics you should look at. Because as as humans, even we do it in the marketing world. We try something, you know, we put out 50 vlogs. And then we look and we only have 100 subscribers on YouTube still, oh, well, do I trash that thing? Or do I get to 100-200 talk about that principle, test, tweak and repeat and then also kind of what metrics should people look at out there or healthcare listeners to see if they’re on the right track? What success metrics should they be looking for?
Brian Fanzo
So like one of the first places I start, and that’s a great example with the YouTube channel, right? The place that I dissect that from at the beginning without even knowing any of those parameters is why the hell do you want subscribers? Right? Like, let’s, let’s subset let’s remove these these tangible variables. I mean, and social media has been the catalyst for us to be extremely lazy in the measurements that we’re using. Because for the rest of marketing world, we hoped we would we would take multiple variables and pull them together for us to manage success, right? Like think about a billboard on the side of the road. Like I mean, give me a thing I’m thinking about how we project ROI of a billboard on the side of a road or like tangible eyeballs based on the amount of traffic based on the amount like there’s so many things that go into that. And then social media came around and the social networks give us these very lazy metrics as in likes and retweets and views and subscribers. We all of a sudden became kind of, you know, hey, we’re gonna, it’s gonna be okay, we’re going to measure against that. And we couldn’t really link that directly to a business goal. And I, and as much as I love social and digital and content, I am business focused, I am not a .org. I’m a .com for a reason I want to help brands and businesses use these solutions to move their business needle. If it’s not, we need to adapt, right? And I think one of the other pieces of this is that consistency is the most important. But on top of consistency, you have to layer in managing expectations of yourself and your audience. And what I mean by that, because when I say consistency, and if you’re a podcast listener, you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I have to do something every week. If I say consistency, and you’re someone that works in media or TV, you’re like, what, I have to do something every day of the week, way or like, and what I like to kind of step back on is it’s not about the amount, right? You get to determine that as the creator as the business owner. The most important element is you’re actually delivering on the consistency that you’re saying so if you’re saying, Hey, I’m going to create a video once a month, you must use must deliver that once a month. And you must be clear with those with that language and, and that can be everything from, hey, maybe I’m not active on Twitter, but we have a Twitter account. Why not put in your bio, manage the expectation in your bio? Hey, we don’t check this account very often, maybe once a week, we are much more active and replying to comments on our Facebook page. But if you’re, you know, if you want to wait for a reply, please give us that kind of bandwidth. I like managing that expectation very transparently. And then in like the test tweak and repeat mantra there is that, like I say, press the down button, right, which is pretty much you don’t know what works until you try it. But here’s the thing once you figure out what’s working, now it’s your job to put some strategy behind it. Now it’s your job to lean into what is working and kind of take dial that up a little bit more, right. And so I think when I say test, tweak and repeat. Sometimes people say, well, Brian, you mean press the down button. You want us to just throw out crappy stuff all the time, and it’s like, No, no, no, there’s plenty Have crappy stuff out there on a regular basis that is flooding the world as we have, you know, as we’re living in it now, because I look at it and say I would rather have one great piece of content that I work hard on getting in front of my audience than five good pieces of content content that I can’t figure out how to get in front, my audience, right and, and that’s the interesting part that we’re living in. Now. the easy part is creating the content like an iPhone, when I livestream the Superbowl, I did 24 hours of interviews at Superbowl 50 from an iPhone. I mean, they hired me to bring it and I did it all from an iPhone sitting outside of Google Assistant 50 in San Francisco. And I always say like if the Super Bowl was willing to do this high quality on the brand channels with an iPhone like none of us have an excuse from using our, our smart device, right like from for doing that for creating content. But when we look at that as like kind of like pay contents, the easy part. The hard part is getting it in front of the right audience. But I would even say that the most difficult part is getting in front of the right audience at the right time. And what I think is most important there is this is where it comes into what we’re measuring, and how we’re going about it. Like I would challenge everyone. I mean, social media is also kind of guys in this idea where we need to go viral, we need to get gaining subscribers, we need to grow these a lot of these tangible numbers. But if we ask business owners can I if I got you one new customer a day, 365 days a year, would you be happy? I know almost every business would be like, yes, give me that yet. We’re like, how can I get this video get a million views and so I work very hard in this in the listening space with my clients, with leaders saying okay, have you asked your audience if you have an email newsletter, if you have something that goes out to your ask your audience what is the channel that you would most likely tune into me on right and, and I can tell you like the probably the place that most have aren’t thinking about today is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is, I am a LinkedIn fanboy at a at a very high level. And I mentioned this before, it’s because of business. I when I went back in January of this year, We were looking at our lead our closed leads. I’m in 2019, 68% of my closed leads in my business and I’m a full time keynote speaker at a fairly high price range of my my Kinney fees range from $15 to $20,000 per event, but 68% of those close leads came from LinkedIn. 68%. I love Instagram. Twitter’s has my favorite, my most popular. I’ve been blogging my website for 10 plus years, and over 3,000 live streams, LinkedIn and I can tell you my what I did on LinkedIn for that entire year. I’ve actually been doing it for a little bit more than a year was I upload one video a week directly to LinkedIn. That is between three to five minutes that I record on my iPhone, usually at a thought leadership level where I’m like, what’s up LinkedIn? Brian Fanzo over here. I want to talk to you about empathy in this new world. I talk a little bit about it. Don’t give a call to action. I say I hope I inspired you guys to think differently. I end the video right and and to be the route that LinkedIn works so well. And so the interesting thing about this when I look at breaking down these numbers and what to measure, I often tell people I will take to LinkedIn comments over 50 Instagram comments, because the audience for me on instagram says, Brian, I love what you talk about. Think it’s cold. So cold speaking. Let me know when you’re speaking in my town. My audience on LinkedIn says, Brian, I love your topics. I love what you’re speaking about, how can I hire you to speak to my company? Right, and let’s face it, that’s the that’s a that’s a shift. And so this is where I think the big piece of this comes down to us being bold enough or open enough to ask our clients, our customers, our target audience, where they would prefer where they want to be. And then the other piece of this is being willing to listen, I think it’s this is one of those mistakes and as a futurist, I can say, otherwise people will say, well, Brian, I hear you I’ve interviewed a little over 35 creators on tik tok that have over a million followers that are making six figures and Revenue and people are like wait Brian so you’re talking Tik-Tok and I’m like well here’s here’s what my I work with my clients and this is where I focus is that we have to market and connect with our customers where they’re at today while listening for where they’re going tomorrow, right and so for me the the interviewing on on on Tik-Tok had a lot less to do with Tik-Tok and a lot more to do with I want to understand why nurses stay at home moms, military attorneys, were creating content on Tick tock, and they weren’t creating it on other places. And the most interesting development of these interviews that I’ve done was they told me, I’ve always felt like I had a voice and a story to tell, but I didn’t feel like I was a creator or a storyteller or a speaker or a video producer or a podcaster and the like, so I got on Tik-Tok, and I could just lip sync to a song and then I got comfortable like video on video. So then I got to use my own voice. And then all of a sudden I found my tribe by like, I mean stay at home mom hashtag on Tik-Tok. For those that don’t know, gets for bill. In uses in the last 1.4 billion users, right? And so if people finding their tribe and finding their people, this is where I think all businesses can, we can step back and say, I don’t care if you have 100 subscribers, if 80 of them are very influential in your network, right, and I think the one piece of this that I really think is overlooked, and I think we can all find value in, especially in this space, is we oftentimes say, we have to reach the person that is our target customer, or a target partner. And I’m going to challenge you to not reach you don’t have to reach that person. Because some people that are listening right now like, Brian, hey, that’s cool. He’s this guy’s passionate, he’s that millennial guy, talking fast, but like, my audience isn’t on LinkedIn like or my audience is on social media, like, I know that all of you are the same. And here’s my answer to that is that it’s almost more important to reach the audience that influences your customers to make a decision. And what I mean by that is the person that, like I said, I reached out to my community. Asking them which you know which healthcare provider I should switch to. But when you think about it, it’s not often about having to reach the person that swipes a credit card or comes in your office. It’s hey, does that person listen to their sister in law? When they’re saying, hey, I, I know you’ve been working on this side hustle for a long while and you’ve had your own healthcare? You know, I’ve been working for an enterprise company now that I’m retiring. You know, I would love to know what what you would recommend, right? And it doesn’t mean that you had to reach the person that is retiring, to actually have value with what the content you’re creating, if you reach the person that influenced them to make the decision that they’re making. And I this can go in all different directions. I mean, I’ve worked with a skinny jean company that targeted 30 to 45 year old females. And we built a Snapchat campaign that targeted 13 to 18 year old females because through their research, they realized that that group, that mom group, was most influenced on what jeans were trending based on their kids and the people in their network or in their neighborhood on what jeans they were wearing. And so we didn’t focus on bringing the gene company in front of people wearing the jeans, it was rather bringing the jean company in front of people that influenced that that target audience. And I think we can, if we all take that approach, it allows us a kind of a almost a different angle to reach an entirely new audience and kind of a creative way.
RJ Martino
Now, this ad is great stuff, you know, you talk about finding your tribe, you know, you’ve spoke about your speaking, we’re kind of wrapping up into what we call this kind of final round. And I want to cap off our conversation with something else that you’re passionate and talk a lot about. And this is concept of ADHD. You know, if you could, you know, picture yourself and imagine you’re standing in front of a room of new physicians, a lot of a lot of our audience are actually new physicians or new health care providers, trying to figure out how to grow their business. But take that even business part aside, you’re able to talk to these new physicians. What would you say to them? You know, can you give them two or three pieces of advice? And maybe in particular on the ADHD topic if you knew you’ve just got this this audience full of people what is something maybe they don’t know? Or what are some strategies that they need to know about, about high performers like you and ADHD? Or you know, just riff on that if you were standing on top of them and you know, in in kind of capping off the conversation on where we’re at?
Brian Fanzo
Sure. I love that and I, I call myself a pager wearing Millennial actually have a pager and usually when I’m working with healthcare providers, that the only other ones that also have pagers at this moment, but the reason I call myself
RJ Martino
That doesn’t work does it?
Brian Fanzo
No, it does not it, but it there, the second one that I own, I did ship out to a friend who is in AI, and he’s building in a little computer that will actually have the pager go off every time someone tweets My name during a presentation and have it come Like, play into it. So it’ll be a little fun there. But it’s cool. Yeah, so I was born in 1981. So I’m on the cusp of that Millennial generation. And so when when I talk about ADHD, one of the things that I kind of am very open and transparent about is that, at 11 years old, my mom was actually told that she needed to medicate me. And when she went back to her friend group, and so, you know, this is 1992, her friend group had the kind of like that stigma that if you’re medicating your children, you’re a bad mom. And unfortunately, you know, it wasn’t something that was talked about in my house mental health or anything like that, those pieces and I was very blessed. I was very fortunate to grow up in a very loving family and very family supported myself and my two younger brothers. And then, you know, as I grew up, went through high school in college, I was the kid with perfect attendance, that loved going to school but didn’t like going to class and that every teacher loved they couldn’t get me to get good grades, even the classes that I loved. I couldn’t pay attention in it to the level I I really wanted to and, you know, even looking at it, like as a holistic, you know, like, I’ve read more books in the eight years since being medicated than I did in my first 31 years of my life, right, just the just the idea of that focus, but the one of the things I want to kind of tie that into is that throughout my 20s and I had we had moved to Arizona, you know, I had gone to multiple doctors, and I believe one of the things for me was this idea of like, because medication or because talking about your flaws or what you know, what was going on in your life wasn’t something as open or as something today that I feel is much more a part of the conversation. I felt like there was multiple opportunities where I missed kind of sharing that with my physician, my doctor saying, you know, hey, I’m struggling with this and, and honestly, it wasn’t until my youngest brother was diagnosed ADHD was was being medicated I told was telling him that I was having trouble sleeping. We had a lot of sleeping tests for a long while on just like my sleeping and since I was a senior in high school, I haven’t slept, you know, didn’t really need more than four to five hours of sleep. And I could be, you know, as live wired as I am at the moment, right? Like, that’s just how I was. And, and it really wasn’t until I had this a doctor when I was 31. And, and I remember walking out of that doctor’s office as one of the most important days of my life, because I walked out of there, not excited to be diagnosed and excited to have medicine, but to realize that, hey, I am different. I do operate differently. But it’s not that I’m broken. Or it’s not that what the way that I’m doing everything is wrong. I just have to approach things much differently. Right and And that, to me was such an eye opening experience and then trying to figure out how to learn that how that works in my life and how it works with the people that I work with. And I can tell you it wasn’t until the last three years so I’m, I’m now 39 years old. In the last three years, I became very transparent and open with everyone on my team, all of my even my partners where I would tell them You’re one of the things that I do a drug holiday every week. So one day of the week, I don’t take my medicine. And and that’s part of it was my physicians kind of giving me the idea that he didn’t want me to build up the tolerance that my younger brother has where it changed his personality, and he no longer is on the medicine. That was a big concern of mine. I’m very blessed that I have not moved in prescription in over five years. I’ve had the same prescription level in five years. I think a lot of it has to do with that. But you know, that taking a day off and I have two children, I’m divorced. I’m co-parenting so like, I have my kids on the weekend, finding a day to take a mental health break and an invest in myself requires me to be open with my my partners, my clients, hey, this is a day that I’m going to struggle with staying focused or I’m not going to reply to the email that was prioritizing and becoming self aware of that. And I think if anything that we’ve kind of, I’m excited about and you can even use Tik-Tok or some of the things that are out there is that yes, social media is exposing A world of a world of, you know, a lot of bad and a lot of things that we are, it’s kind of disgusting. And but it’s also creating movements like Me Too, and Black Lives Matter and a lot of things that are happening. And and this is where I look at and say that, you know, social media hasn’t created this badness, it’s actually given us a microphone, and the ability to amplify to stop the badness from happening, right. And I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. But it’s also giving us an opportunity to examine how we’re having conversations about certain things, right. And so for me, like looking back in my 20s, someone asked me like, hey, Brian, do you think you might have ADHD? My answer would be no, like, don’t give me that scarlet letter. Don’t put that on me. Even though I knew reading a book and struggling you know, and paying attention, even in courses that I loved, and I played college hockey, so I had mandatory study hall hours and a lot of the things that we had in college and you know, it was a very frustrating world for me, but I think if I if I take it all, you know, in, you know, encompass today, one of those big pieces, we self awareness and being like, okay, let’s just, you know, I set up a time lapse camera on myself for an eight hour workday. And I go back and look and say, Brian, what were you doing for these 48 minutes, and it was like, Oh, I was working on a graphic, or I was scrolling Instagram, wherever it may be. And I started to try to adapt my day, and even finding out which part of my days I’m most productive. So I’m very active in the morning. those that know me, I blocked my calendar, usually one to 4pm. I don’t take on anything because I am. That’s my least productive time. And I kind of give myself a break, I oftentimes come back and work better at the end of the evening. And so I think when we’re looking at a lot of the the world we’re in today, there is a lot of conversation. You know, I’m a huge advocate for mental health. I do a lot of sharing the struggles and, and also, you know, the good and the bad of all of it. I’m on Adderall. So Adderall has plenty of side effects and things that I have to be very conscious about. But I also think there is this unity in the fact that our vulnerabilities are actually what unite us, and help us find our tribe, more so than our strengths, right? And for me, that that all comes, like, that’s the motivator for me whenever someone says, you know, and I and I did this probably three weeks ago, as I shared, you know, a picture of a day that I was really struggling to have energy and stay motivated. And, and part of that was, you know, if I’m doing that, and I have a great network of friends and colleagues, and I have, you know, children and family that love me. What about the person that doesn’t have that? What about the person that is struggling, going through the same thing I’m doing without the things that I’m very thankful for? And so I do believe we can have these conversations, but I think one of the things that we can look at it from a mental health perspective and, and I like, I like working, just kind of in context, like the two companies that I work with in a charity, volunteering, my time is No Kid Hungry. I’ve been on the Social Council for No Kid Hungry now for seven years where our goal is to end childhood hunger here in America and we work very hard on on content and with influencers working with chefs, and the other one is with a company called Stop A Race, which is focused on ending child trafficking, very difficult conversation to have as a dad of three girls that are 10, 9 and 6. And I think the reason I bring these up is that a lot of these conversations are very difficult to have, you know, the idea of, you know, we created a virtual reality of what it would be like to be in a box as a child and, and taking off that headset, you’re crying, and also wanting to volunteer and open your checkbox because your checkbook because you’re like, I can’t even imagine and, and I bring all that up to say, like, part of the difficult conversations that we’re all learning to try to have. There’s also this kind of piece of finding the people that are trusted in your space, to kind of work with them to figure out how to bring in more people and kind of extend that and I don’t want to use the word influencer marketing, but it has a tendency of a piece of that where it says like, you know, I’ve I’ve actually been, you know, I’ve tweeted out in the health care provider that I’m with has actually been He shared my content multiple times on social which completely surprised me really, they reached out they asked me to sign but like, they they were like Brian, we don’t we didn’t know that, you know, this is your box but like the fact you’re having this conversation might open the door for future conversations. So I think we are in a really great time that the vulnerabilities are going to happen because I can tell you the thing that gets me up excited in the morning and excited for what I do is I truly do believe with social media technology digital, that the world should be a less lonely place that suicide rates should be going down that the fact that people are feeling this disconnect and you know COVID has been you know, I’m I live by myself I had moved closer to where my children live. I’m here in Virginia, and my my girlfriend for a long, long while lives in Atlanta and we shared residence and because of my travel, all of a sudden with COVID I was locked and loaded here in my house for four months without seeing her without traveling. And it was very lonely time very disconnected and open minded. Do a lot of this space. But I, when I look at all the things that are available for us, we have the opportunity to listen to to be part of the conversations, and to approach things and kind of unique or difficult, you know, different ways. And I think for me when I look at that, like early 20s space, if there was if there was someone that I could relate to, and it wasn’t a doctor asking me if I had if I thought I had ADHD, but it was either people through video content or social even highlighted news cases of someone that was, you know, high functioning, right, like, and it’s a big piece for me, when someone sees me on a stage, you know, in front of, you know, 12,000 people, and I’m saying hey, I’m, you know, diagnose ADHD and I’m currently medicated the amount of people that come to me and say, Brian, I’m medicated for this or Brian, I struggled for this. Most of the time, it’s not ADHD, it’s most of the time and it’s something else that they’re they’re all struggling with. And so, I guess that’s where I would look at this because I am like, I love what I do because I want to help us get to that path and I think transparency is important, amplifying both durability is as important and also kind of looking re looking at, you know, I as a dad, like with my three daughters, I have conversations with my daughters that I don’t think my parents would have ever thought they would have had with me. And if that if that if that growing example of like, I mean even COVID and, and we had someone that was in our family circle that had passed away from COVID, and kind of explaining what a pandemic was to my children and kind of having that conversation. And so I’m a, you know, I’m a, I’m a proponent, I’m a believer, I try to practice it with what I share, that we can put it out to the world, we can kind of allow our vulnerabilities to connect us and hopefully, you know, make the world a little bit less lonely of a place.
Jordan Smith
Well, just in our short time of talking to you, I can tell that you’re, you’re 100% authentic in your passion for what you do. So for the listeners out there, I know that that translates out through the audio or video or wherever you’re absorbing this content. So, Brian, we are privileged to have you on our little podcast, we appreciate you so much for those listeners out there that want more information or they’re listening to your message and and and they want to get more content from you or even if they want to engage with you or or your team. Tell them about the best ways to kind of reach out to you how to find out more information about you all the kind of regular contact info stuff.
Brian Fanzo
Sure, yeah, so my brand is iSocialFanz. Letter “I” social, and then F-A-N-Z or Zed. My last name is Fanzo and I early on created nine Twitter accounts with fans, F-A-N-Z at the end and the iSocialFanz wound ended up sticking so that’s my business and brand as well. Every social network you could imagine from LinkedIn, to Pinterest, to Tumblr, I’m there I always say Don’t follow me everywhere. Pick one. I’m very active on all of the channels but I don’t recommend everyone to be active everywhere. Pick your favorite one. I have two podcasts that are currently active on in the podcast space. If you’re a podcast fan, I have FOMO fans, which stands for the Fear Of Missing Out, I’ve been doing that podcast for over three years now. It’s a solo podcast. So it’s me ranting kind of on different topics, everything from entrepreneurship to marketing, to social media to ADHD and, and public speaking. And then my newest podcast is press the down button, where it’s an interview style podcast where I’m interviewing different leaders in my network on what buttons they’ve pressed throughout their career that have got them to where they’re, they’re currently going. And then if you know I do a lot in the virtual space and a lot of the speaking, you know, where I speak to big brands, it’s because you know, small businesses, I’ve been doing a lot of executive meetings where I come in and host 30 minutes or an hour of conversation. BrianFanzo.com so just my Brian fans.com is the website for all of that up there. I create a lot of free content. I really love what I’m doing you my my big piece of it is speaking. So the last one is I created a YouTube channel focused on virtual presentations being better on Zoom, what this virtual world works, you know, all those different things. And so if you just put into your browser, Pressthedamnbutton.video, so pressthedamnbutton.video into your browser, it’ll redirect you to my YouTube channel. I’m uploading a couple videos a week. It’s all on virtual I’m not doing anything else on that channel, and really just trying to help level up and raise the bar on on virtual side. But yeah, this is a this is a pleasure I love part of the thing I love about my job is the ability to connect with great people doing great things, and helping kind of shared that message and hopefully, connect our world. So I really appreciate you guys having me on.
Jordan Smith
Yeah, thanks so much, Brian. And all those links that Brian talked about. He’s, he’s active on all of them will include all those links in the show notes also. So Brian fanzo, we appreciate it so much. Thank you.
Brian Fanzo
Cheers.
RJ Martino
Thanks, Brian.
Jordan Smith
All right. Brian did not make me a liar. I felt like that was a great interview. RJ a couple of takeaways that you had from from talking to Brian?
RJ Martino
Well, you know, I just liked all of the real world stories that he had no, he wasn’t name-dropping as much as he was showing the variety of different types of organizations he’s helped. And it allowed me to really kind of put myself in their shoes, and be empathetic on what they were struggling with at the time. So I just love that he was able to tie all that together.
Jordan Smith
Yeah, I love those takeaways, being empathetic. Finding your tribe, being vulnerable, you know, all of those different things and, and just trying stuff new. I like what he said. If you’re out there, and you’re trying to figure out ways to grow your business and you’re, you’re thinking about ideas. Just go ahead and start it, hit that button, go ahead and hit the damn button, hit record. Start putting stuff out there and start putting yourself out there as an organization.
RJ Martino
Love it. Love it. Well, Jordan, thanks so much. I would tell our audience he came to us By recommendation, if you can recommend a speaker to us, we’d love to reach out to him and get them on. We’re doing this for our audience. If there are things you’d like us to ask more often, if there are types of guests you want us to go after, and even if you can’t recommend someone individually, we’d love it. Please like, subscribe, write a review and do us one favor forward to one person. Just one person that needs to needs to hear this message forwarded over and we would be eternally grateful. Absolutely.
Jordan Smith
All right, everybody. I probably made podcast out. Thanks RJ. Until next time,
