It’s a double-header today. Brian Scanlon reveals his social media marketing secrets AND how to create value in your business so you can sell it for top dollar.
As the founder of the agency Posted Social and head of M&A at Global Source Infrastructure Partners (and future college baseball coach), Brian is uniquely qualified to help startups, small companies, and service providers boost their business in all sorts of ways.
He gives away plenty of trade secrets, including…
- Why “creative” social media marketing doesn’t work
- The #1 thing you can do to make your business appealing to buyers
- One of the best ways to capture the Baby Boomer market
- The most important metric in social media today
- And more
Listen now…
Mentioned in This Episode: www.postedsocial.com and www.globalsourceip.com
Episode Transcript:
David Elmasian: Welcome to the Hub of Success. I’m your host, Dave Elmasian. Today I’m excited to talk to Brian Scanlon, Founder of Posted Social and Director of Mergers and Acquisitions at Globalsource Infrastructure Partners. Posted Social is a full-service, social media management agency for startups and small businesses.
With Globalsource Infrastructure Partners, Brian works with Marc Portney, a world-famous entrepreneur that invested in new products and inventions. Marc has a show on the Science Channel called, All-American Makers. Brian coordinates many events across the country and works with entrepreneurs on marketing and growing their business through social media and with his background of finance and mergers and acquisitions, helping those wanting to have a successful exit strategy can become a reality.
If you own a business or are starting a business, you’ll want to hear how specific activities and financials can have a huge impact on your business value to an investor. Well Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Brian Scanlon: David, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
David Elmasian: Well good. So, we’re going to get you started on a quick-fire round on check your tech. For people that have listened before, we used to have it at the end, but we’re mixing things up and we’re going to try it at the beginning. So Brian, there’s no wrong answer here.
Brian Scanlon: Okay.
David Elmasian: We’re just going to get some of the tech stuff out of the way because you know I’m a tech guy. I can’t help it. I got to inject a little bit of tech into this conversation. So tell me, Brian, are you a Mac or PC guy?
Brian Scanlon: Mac, all the way.
David Elmasian: Really?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, I just got-
David Elmasian: Oh, all the way.
Brian Scanlon: Just got a new iMac.
David Elmasian: Really? Okay-
Brian Scanlon: I’ve never had one before but got one for the desktop.
David Elmasian: Okay all right, so he’s a convert now.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah.
David Elmasian: iPhone or Android?
Brian Scanlon: iPhone.
David Elmasian: All right, I see where this is going. How about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn? All the above, one and you know-
Brian Scanlon: Well nature of the business, I think, all of the above but personally, Twitter.
David Elmasian: All right, oh you’re a Twitter guy?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah personally.
David Elmasian: Really? If you notice now, remember it’s called the Hub of Success, which Hub is acronym for Boston, so I got to call it Twitta.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, Twitta.
David Elmasian: It’s not Twitter. It’s Twitta all right? So just keep that in mind.
Brian Scanlon: That’s all right.
David Elmasian: Netflix or Hulu?
Brian Scanlon: Netflix.
David Elmasian: All right. See I can’t get anybody to say Hulu. They must have no customers.
Brian Scanlon: I don’t know. I don’t know what shows they have.
David Elmasian: See? All right, okay. Any marketing people listening, you know you heard it here first.
Brian Scanlon: Here we go.
David Elmasian: Roku, Apple TV or Chromecast?
Brian Scanlon: Apple TV, for sure.
David Elmasian: All right, here we go with the Apple stuff.
Brian Scanlon: Mac all the way.
David Elmasian: Gmail or Outlook?
Brian Scanlon: Gmail.
David Elmasian: Okay, now this may or may not be relevant, but we’ll see if it becomes relevant or not, Home Depot or Lowe’s?
Brian Scanlon: You know I’ve bounced around where I live, so it’s wherever is closer. I will tell you though, Lowe’s has a better grill section for me and that’s a big deal.
David Elmasian: I agree with that. Hey, I’m perfectly good with that.
Brian Scanlon: I can’t fix anything, but I can cook it, so that’s good.
David Elmasian: That’s all that counts. So let’s jump into it. So Brian, tell us about how you got started with social media in the company you started.
Brian Scanlon: Sure, sure. So, I kind of got my first taste of business as a Junior in college. I think it’s important to say, I went to Babson, which is number one in the world for entrepreneurship.
David Elmasian: Oh, and by the way, now Babson has a very famous person there, I think it was, you know, attended there for a while. Do you know who I’m referring to?
Brian Scanlon: The Home Depot guy? Is that where you’re going with that?
David Elmasian: Wow, his own alma mater. He’s going to Lowe’s.
Brian Scanlon: We never met, so it was a little before my time.
David Elmasian: Just a little, okay, I’m sorry.
Brian Scanlon: So yeah, being in that environment, they foster entrepreneurship and business and any time I can credit Babson for anything, I do because it was such an important and impactful piece of my life in a lot of ways, but my Junior year, my aunt came to me. She had a boutique PR company and she said, hey one of my clients wants to be on social media. This was 2008, so-
David Elmasian: Right, I was going to ask you that, put some context to it.
Brian Scanlon: And keep in mind, 2006 you still had to be in college or have a college email to have Facebook. So in 2008, things were really just evolving, and she’s like, I don’t have one of these. I don’t know what to do. Do you want to just post on their Facebook? I was like, yeah sure. I don’t know what that means either but sure, let me do it. Starting off, I think it was like 300 bucks a month. That was a lot dollar beers at Roger’s Pub that bought that passion and that turned into a couple months later, she said hey, I got another one. Hey, I got another one and ultimately, that little business became Social Mediators, which I had until 2014 and we grew it to really working with those small businesses and then in 2014, was just kind of looking for a little bit of a career change, little bit of a shift. Keep going through the whole thing?
David Elmasian: Yeah sure, absolutely yeah.
Brian Scanlon: All right, great. So I exited that company successfully and went into the investment banking world. I had met a guy along the way. His name was Mike O’Hare. He runs a company-
David Elmasian: Hold on a second. You got to say it the right way.
Brian Scanlon: O’Hai-
David Elmasian: Not so much that, but and they also got to bring in another cliché which is, I met a guy. Now you said like a Boston guy would say, I met a guy. Now how would you say it … Now, you mentioned New Jersey at some point, right? Are you from the local-
Brian Scanlon: Well I’m from Staten Island originally and then we went down the shore so-
David Elmasian: Okay so did you really … Did you meet a guy or how did you meet a guy? Come on now, I’m jokin’.
Brian Scanlon: I saw a guy on the street and he-
David Elmasian: I’m sorry to interrupt.
Brian Scanlon: We met through some somewhat legal activity. No, so Mike had a big Wall Street background and he ran a little boutique M and A shop and he said, hey you just finished your MBA. Like, I’m looking for a partner. What do you think? And took a shot on a guy that, meaning me, that really had no experience and I learned a ton from him and we worked with companies in the low to mid-market which is like if you’re making anywhere from five million to about $100 million in top line revenue a year and we helped them successfully either sell their business, acquire a business or raise some funding for a strategic activity that they wanted to do, and we worked with IT service companies in that space. All the while-
David Elmasian: I know a little bit about IT service companies.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, so value added resellers, data centers, SaaS companies, all kind of stuff. While we were doing that, as kind of a hobby, I was still managing a couple accounts through, make a little side money and it was easy stuff and that was growing. So that was getting built up and a couple years ago, I met guy named Marc Portney, who you mentioned at the beginning, a celebrity entrepreneur and he said hey, I’m looking for somebody to do my social media. What do you think?
We met at a diner, had breakfast up on the turnpike somewhere in Jersey and five hours later, we left after a lot of eggs and a lot of coffee and not only was I managing his social media, but he offered me to manage his investment arm of Globalsource Infrastructure Partners.
David Elmasian: Well you know, when you say the story, when you look at it separately, it seems a little like there’s a disconnect there, but then when you talk about it, like you and I had a little conversation prior, if you think about it, it really has a lot of synergy between the two because if you’re really on top of social media which is the way most organizations and companies grow their business now, it’s going to make the company more valuable. And if you’re going to make them more valuable, hey are you ready to sell?
Brian Scanlon: Exactly, exactly and you know, our approach to not only the social, but with investing in businesses, is you have to learn their company to be successful in either. So, if we’re going to successfully roll out a social media campaign or any kind of marketing campaign, I can’t just say, oh you do managed services? We know what you’re doing. No, we got to learn it and really become an extension of your company without being a full-time employee and that’s where the social media fits in and then, as companies are marketed correctly, it’s a gift for potential acquirers.
David Elmasian: Of course, yeah. The value goes up and-
Brian Scanlon: Absolutely, absolutely it’s all got to fit together.
David Elmasian: So, let’s talk a little bit more social media because social media means different things to different people and part of what you and I talked about too is, who you’re trying to attract is different in the sense that you have B to C companies, B to B. I know you and I talked a little bit about this. It’s not that maybe exclusively, but you do work with a lot of B to B companies and organizations and so what’s your approach, what makes you guys different in terms of social media?
I know you mentioned one thing about knowing the business. That sounds like a no-brainer or should be a given, but I’ve spoken with a bunch of social media agencies and I’m using air quotes for those that can’t see, and like you’ve said, and I’ve seen the results and the results are it comes out of some factory that we call somewhere and it’s all the same, right? So what is it about what you guys do that you think is a little unique and different?
Brian Scanlon: I go back to the business side. I think a lot of agencies are … I don’t mean this disrespectful, but creatives, right, and they lack the understanding of, okay from a business goal perspective, how is this going to drive revenue, right? And we come in and we really try to say, all right what are your business goals and then, how do we align that with your overall marketing? And your social is, you can’t speak to every client every day, but you can do it through social.
So that’s the voice of your brand and you want that to mimic your business goals and oftentimes, when we sit down with people, we kind of show them how, what you’re doing right now, if you tell me your goal for social is to use it as a customer service channel, right? You have a lot of individual customers. Well then, you should be using it that way. When you really break it down and they’re not matching up, it’s clear to the customer that, oh wow, we’re just not going about this the right way. So being able to come in and deeply understand the company, their market, the niche they’re in and then execute on the social media marketing side is really where we differ.
David Elmasian: I was listening to another podcast just recently and they were talking about something similar and I think it resonated with something that you just said, which is, one thing that is very unique about social media as opposed to traditional, I’m just going to use the word, advertising, for lack of a better term, it’s two-way communication or has the ability to have two-way communication. When I send out an email blast to my customers, it’s one way. Yeah, they can respond but it’s not interactive.
Brian Scanlon: And you get a lot of, out-of-office replies, right?
David Elmasian: Yeah right, exactly. That’s the interaction, right. If I put it in a print ad, which I guess some people still do that, right?
Brian Scanlon: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Elmasian: Again, it’s all one way. Social media, like you said, if done properly and it’s done in a way that with that thought in mind, it allows customers to interact with that and respond to that, so you get that instant feedback, so to speak, which is really unique. I think that’s kind of a game changer for the little I know about marketing.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah absolutely. That conversational piece and the engagement piece. In 2008, it was how many followers do you have? Now it’s how much you engage in. What’s your frequency? If I have 10 followers, are all 10 of them interacting with me? I’ll take that over a million and nobody says a word, you know? So that engagement piece is so important to giving a voice and I just had a conversation the other day with a potential customer who said, we’re scared of social media because of the negative that could come about. People could leave poor reviews. I said, yeah but you can answer that in a way to try to make it positive. If they say, your company sucks, and you answer it the right way-
David Elmasian: Were you reading reviews on my company?
Brian Scanlon: I was trying not to bring it up, but if we want to go there, so. But you spin it and then anybody with half a brain reads that comment and says, well you know, this person’s just out of line. They tried to answer it the right way. So you can’t be scared of that stuff either. You got to be able to attack, you know not attack, but answer the customers.
David Elmasian: Yeah, yeah, but I think that’s a legitimate objection, right? I’m sure you’ve heard that more so in the past but I’m sure you still hear it and I think every business owner, myself included, that’s one of the first things that comes to mind and there’s a fear factor that somebody’s going to take some random negative thing and just throw it at your business. But like you said, as we’ve talked about, because of the interactive nature of social media, you have a voice to respond to that and if you respond like a jerk, well then people might think, well gee, maybe there’s truth to it, right? But if you respond in such a way that either because maybe you’ve made a mistake and every business makes mistakes, if you respond in a way that you can see as being authentic, it actually I think, can actually make more fans of your business than not, right?
Brian Scanlon: Absolutely yeah. Yeah I mean, you can make up for it tenfold. We had a customer who, they sell a very inexpensive product, but it was late and we got, hey this was supposed to be a Christmas gift, blah, blah, blah. Sorry about it. We’re going to send you an extra one. Now that person is like floored that we would even send it. It’s a 9.99 item and something simple as that builds credibility that you can’t really measure that.
David Elmasian: No, no. So in addition to the traditional social media that we talked about. Are there any types of businesses that match better or worse with some of the social media networks out there when we talk about Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all that?
Brian Scanlon: Sure, so B to B is people say, ah well I’m not going to do well with social on B to B, but we had a software company, Microsoft reseller, and they built their own little suite within Microsoft Office 365, and we managed a LinkedIn group for them and that LinkedIn group was as active as could be to the point where I had to hire somebody full-time to manage the LinkedIn group, but they were getting so many leads from it. Now if we took their information and we posted a picture on Instagram and said, this is our software. People would say, well I don’t really care.
David Elmasian: Yeah, Stu is fast, right?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah but you have to find where that engagement is and where people want to talk. We’re trying to win another account that they sell the USB flash drives. They’re one of the biggest sellers in the world of those. Well, who wants to talk about that? Well you’d be really surprised who wants to talk about on YouTube-
David Elmasian: Trust me. Remember what I do. I have a bunch of geeks that work for me, so stuff like that, they could talk all day, every day about things like that.
Brian Scanlon: Right and that’s a big YouTube play. People have blogs that they’re watching 30 minute videos about a flash drive. I’m like, to me it’s crazy, but-
David Elmasian: Right, whatever floats your boat, right?
Brian Scanlon: You have to find it. You can’t just say, oh Facebook Twitter, Instagram and expect returns. You’re not going to get it. You got to find the niche.
David Elmasian: Yep, so let’s switch gears a little bit. Talk about the work that you do, as I said, with Marc and his team and some of the interesting stuff that probably comes out of that as far as new products and inventions. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, we get a lot of interesting things. So Globalsource is his investment arm and basically, Marc has built kind of a stronghold in the consumer products base. So not really interested in apps or software or those, but more so, hard goods that he can take on HSN and sell or we have good manufacturing relationships. So, we seek out opportunities in that space and we have guys that come to us who make a prototype in their garage that we turn into a business, and then people that have 75 worldwide patents that have a medical device that’s going to change the world, and everything in between. We see some crazy things too. So he has a website, marcportney.com and we use our social media to push a lot of traffic to that, where we encourage people to submit their ideas.
Today, I had three conversations before this with people that submitted ideas that we said, we want to hear more about. One’s a camping product. Another one is like a tailgate stool and they kind of fit a certain product line that we might be able to blow up. We get our fair share of-
David Elmasian: Crazy stuff.
Brian Scanlon: Crazies too. We had one last week that it was a video and it was a guy with a buzz saw and a fork standing in front of the camera and we’re like, where the heck is this going? No words. It was I think, a Russian guy sent it in and he’s looking at a piece of steak and he takes the buzz saw and he saws the edge of the fork and now he cuts the steak with the fork and he eats with just that and he throws the knife in the garbage and his pitch is, he wants to get rid of knives by making the edge of the fork sharp-
David Elmasian: Sharp. I hope he’s got tough lips.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, you go to Grill 23, right, and you’re in Grill 23 getting a $400.00 dinner and they give you one fork and no knife. That’s the play. So we see things that are wild too.
David Elmasian: So, anything that comes to mind that maybe has been successful that he’s discovered, so to speak?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah sure. So one of the ones now that is just taken off like crazy is a product called Quick Fire. It’s a fire starter. It comes in a little packet. You can get it wet. You can start it with a strike or you could start it with a lighter. You basically can create a fire that burns at 750 degrees for 10 minutes. You can cook over it. So campers, doomsday preppers, my Dad lighting his fireplace, grill. I use it on my smoker all the time because it’s safe and it’s just an unbelievable product and we’re seeing a lot of success with it at trade shows and everything like that and this was an investment that he made at first saying hey, I’m going to take it on HSN and see if we sell it and that turned into, I want to buy the business, and now it’s turning into wow, this is a real business.
We have another product that we’re looking to sell. So, we kind of take the product through the full life cycle. It’s a product called EZ Bulb. E-Z Bulb, changing out light bulb high hats that instead of getting on a ladder, this is something that attaches to any broom handle, paint pole, whatever it is, and we have patents, 50 worldwide utility patents. We’re the only people that can put teeth in a LED bulb, twist it and take it out. So you walk into a building like this. There’s seven million light bulbs.
David Elmasian: I’m sure, yeah.
Brian Scanlon: Somebody’s got to go up there and twist them all out.
David Elmasian: Somebody’s got to do it.
Brian Scanlon: And now you don’t have to. So simple things like that and they’re things that people can easily understand are kind of what we go for. Fire, how much more simple does it get? Like okay, I can light a fire. Yeah well, yeah you can without it, you can’t.
David Elmasian: Well like you said, the advantage to that is, it’s universal, so you’re not limited to a very specific target or market or audience or what have you. And the other thing that I think that has some of the appeal like when you mentioned you have a show upcoming. And again, it depends on when this podcast airs. It may not have already come and gone, but there’s something nice about tangible stuff. Some of us, myself included, work in service businesses where you don’t really make anything. I mean, you do but you don’t really, and it’s kind of nice when you actually have something that like, hey look, I made this.
Brian Scanlon: No absolutely and I’ve always been in the service side of things, so coming into this was like, and then to go back to the social media space, products do really well, right?
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Brian Scanlon: You know, point, click. I can see it. I can see somebody lighting the fire starter. Wow, I buy it. My IT service business, I have to explain to you three, four, five times-
David Elmasian: Exactly, it’s not as clear cut.
Brian Scanlon: Right, so the product stuff is great, and we do have a pitch event coming up. We’re trying to run a lot more of these. We’re going to have one in New York in February that I’ll spread the word about, which is a free event. You come, you pitch your idea and you might walk out of there with an investment.
David Elmasian: Well like I said, I wish I had something to pitch. I don’t really have anything. I think it would just be kind of fascinating. We all have these visions of like Shark Tank and that kind of thing, but I think it would just be interesting seeing both the good and the bad. I think even the crazy stuff that people would come in with would have to be pretty interesting too.
Brian Scanlon: Right because it gets everybody loosened up and laughing and we’ve done a few of them over the last couple months that we’ve made investments from, we’re going to make investments into as we get through the process and then, we have some that we say, best of luck and I hope it works.
David Elmasian: So, let’s switch to your mergers and acquisition hat. When you’re looking at either a business or a company that has a product or services, whatever the case is, for the entrepreneurs that are listening to this, what should they be thinking about in terms of what’s going to make their business more valuable? I mean, there’s always the obvious stuff, sales and profitability, but is there other stuff that you can think of that maybe may not be so obvious that really do provide a degree of value?
Brian Scanlon: Absolutely. I think the one that wasn’t obvious to me that is now, after working with everything from somebody that just has a patent, all the way up to a 75-million-dollar company is you have to remove yourself from it in order to sell it unless you want to stay on until you’re 85 years old. If you leave today, does the business run, right, and investors aren’t going to say, oh I have somebody that’ll step in and do it exactly like you. They want to know that if you don’t show up for three months, are we still going to have a company. So systematizing things and putting in processes and giving people responsibility, where you can delegate and say, hey I don’t have to do this anymore. We have somebody for that. It just makes it that much more attractive for an investor. Am I buying you or am I buying a product that’s going to yield me a return?
David Elmasian: Yeah, I mean, I see that a lot in small businesses because the nature of what we do too is we walk into a lot of offices, and it’s true. We all buy into that same mentality that as the small business owner, we feel like, well usually when we start it, we are doing everything and then after a while, as you bring more people in, letting go of some of those things can be a bit of challenge. I remember somebody made a comment once about that very topic, and I told my shamelessly use it myself which is, you get to the point where you feel like you’re the only person competent enough to be able to order pizza for the company party.
There’s that certain mentality but I think that illustrates the point that you were trying to make which is, hey if I’ve going to invest in this business, if this person is outside of it now, is this still going to have … Is it still going to profitable? Are they still going to be able to run effectively and all that? So for the people that are listening that really want to be able to have a good saleable business, part of it is like you said, delegating and making sure that everything isn’t dependent upon them.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah and making it … The easy way out is to say make it a company, right? Don’t make it you, as the business. Make it a company and another thing is too, that’s another tip, or kind of not easy but a fix is if you’re in a service-based business, people are looking for recurring revenue, right, from an investment standpoint. I want to know that my run rate’s going to be X amount of dollars a month. If you’re in a project based business, that’s not recurring revenue.
David Elmasian: Right.
Brian Scanlon: Right, that’s not guaranteed. Even though recurring is not guaranteed, it’s looked at as more guaranteed. So if you can find a way within your projects to say, hey if we spread this out over 12 months, now I’m more enticing for a sale versus a $30,000.00 project chunk or figuring out another service to offer to get there. That could really set you up nicely.
David Elmasian: Yeah because like you said, why reinvent … It’s tough reinventing the wheel every month, right, but if you have that income stream coming in on a regular basis, it’s the way of the world. Everything seems to be subscription nowadays for good reason. So switching gears one more time, I promise.
Brian Scanlon: Okay, that’s all right, that’s all I do.
David Elmasian: That’s okay. You have a background in baseball, right?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah.
David Elmasian: You were a-
Brian Scanlon: So, I played at Babson and we had an unbelievable time there and when I graduated, as I was running Social Mediators, I was the Assistant Baseball Coach and the Recruiting Coordinator there ’til 2014, actually 2015, and I thought I wanted to be a college baseball coach. I still do but I realized that $27,000.00 a year wasn’t what I wanted to do and I had a taste of making a couple bucks with the social media business, so I said, you know what, I have a good friend and a mentor. His name is Bruce Ginsberg. He came back and coached. He’s from down here, in Westwood. He ran a very successful company and sold it when he was 50 years old. So, he went through his life, sold a business, then he came back and coached and that’s the model I want to do now.
David Elmasian: See, that’s a good model.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, but I loved it. I met a lot of really cool people in it.
David Elmasian: So, what is it about baseball? For people that haven’t played the game, what hooked you?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, what hooked me is the people. I mean literally, the most influential people in my life are either coaches or people I played with and my best friends, when I got married, there was nine guys in the wedding. Everybody except-
David Elmasian: You had a whole team, huh?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, I said I’m going to need a team because just in case we get a phone going, I can hit it and fill the outfield, but every guy, except my wife’s brothers were high school baseball teammates of mine and that’s just how it was and to this day, I still try to stay involved. I help families and kids through the college recruiting process and I actually have another business that’s-
David Elmasian: Another business, come on.
Brian Scanlon: It’s a hobby. It’s really a hobby, but it’s called the Recruiting Coaches-
David Elmasian: When do you find time to sleep?
Brian Scanlon: I find time to sleep and eat. I wish I didn’t find time to sleep and eat but yeah, and that’s a blast because I get to help people through a really difficult decision in their lives just because I know the nature of the recruiting industry and we work with not a lot of people, but it’s fun to be intimate with the family and get to know the kid and watch them move on in life. It’s pretty neat.
David Elmasian: So, do you still follow baseball? Do you follow the professional level, at all levels, what?
Brian Scanlon: I’m obsessed with it. Two years ago, I took my Dad out to the College World Series in Omaha. This will be our third year now. The day we got there, he goes, we’re coming back. Like, this is cool. So I love it. I’ll watch it on TV with the sound off. I don’t really care. It’s just all my friends are in that world. Unfortunately, I’m a Yankee fan displaced up here.
David Elmasian: All right, let’s stop it right here.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, I know it’s tough. My wife’s whole family is Red Sox fans and-
David Elmasian: Actually, it’s okay because we have some pity for you now at this point.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, hey I got to tip the cap. That’s a heck of a ball club this year, really good, but no, I love it. It’s a fun outlet.
David Elmasian: How do you explain to people that don’t follow baseball and I hear it myself. I even hear it from my own kids. Oh it’s boring and it takes so long and it’s slow. How do you respond to people? Not that you have to defend it, but how do you respond to that?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, it’s not boring when you love it. Like I think trying to fix the light bulb is boring. I don’t love it. Then some people that’ll go build a house. I think it’s boring. So I think it’s a game that if you played it, it teaches you a lot because you can fail seven out of 10 times and you’re a Hall of Famer. You do that in business-
David Elmasian: Eh, not so much, right?
Brian Scanlon: You don’t last too long right, or you do that in anything else probably besides the weatherman and you’re good. So it’s that failure that teaches you how to deal with a lot of stuff and setting you up for later in life when most of the things you hear or know and you just develop a passion for it.
David Elmasian: Well one of the things that, actually a good friend of mine, who’s been very successful in business, one of the things he said to me many years ago and it really is ringing true, which is, he used to hire not exclusively, but he would look for people that had an athletic background either at an amateur or professional level. If all things being equal, he would hire the person that had that athletic background and the reason why he said that is because A, they’re open to coaching and learning and growing and developing and then B, they have some discipline and some structure because that’s what was required in order to be successful and those same habits usually pay off well in the business world, so to speak.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah well you have to compete-
David Elmasian: And the competition, right.
Brian Scanlon: And I think compete is the biggest thing because if you’re a complacent person, then you can roll out of bed and just do your work every day, and no more, no less.
David Elmasian: Right.
Brian Scanlon: You’re only going to go so far. You got to have that drive and that compete, no matter what.
David Elmasian: Especially if you’re self-employed because like I said, when you’re self-employed, you have to have that drive because it beats you up, right? We’ve all had our ups and downs in business and without having, like you said, that competitive drive and that willingness to be beat up and like I said, in the case of baseball, if you say man, I’m going to fail seven out of 10 times, most people would say, you’re crazy. Why do you keep doing it? But when you have that mindset, okay, well I’m not focused on the seven times that I’m not going to succeed. I’m focused on the three and how do I make those three into four.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, college baseball, you got a hit. You got rewarded by being in the lineup the next day. In business, you get a hit, you get rewarded with a new client and a paycheck and it’s a nice-
David Elmasian: Which is kind of a nice thing.
Brian Scanlon: It’s still a victory but you got to go about it the same way. You get up, you answer the bell, and you compete.
David Elmasian: Yep, so social media, we’ve hit upon different angles of it right now, but where do you see it going? Do you see it kind of staying the way it is now? Do you feel like it’s going to change? Do you think Twitter’s going to survive? I mean, what are your thoughts on that kind of stuff?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing that scares me about it, and I was listening to somebody speak about it the other day, is kind of how it’s influencing like younger generations for the negative. Like bullying and all that stuff, so I think we’re going to see some regulation and I don’t know who’s going to make it, who’s not, but I think there’s going to be some kind of better policing with this. You know, you got the whole election stuff and everything. So, that’s one trend.
The other trend is, it ain’t going anywhere. Like I tell people we’re a social media marketing company, but this is marketing. You know you mentioned print. That’s great. It still exists but if I can get to 10,000 people in their pocket and they don’t have to buy a magazine, I’d rather go that route. So, I think it’s going to blow up. I’m kind of big on where Facebook is right now. People are down on it, but one thing Marc talks about a lot is the Baby Boomer generations getting older and they’re going to need services and everything.
David Elmasian: Yeah, don’t look at me that way.
Brian Scanlon: You look great and that’s something that my Mom’s on Facebook more than like my 20-year-old cousin-
David Elmasian: I’m glad you didn’t say your Grandmother, you know, all right. I’m glad I’m just in the Mom category still.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, you’re still there.
David Elmasian: All right, good.
Brian Scanlon: But I think that market’s going to cater towards … Facebook’s going to cater towards that and-
David Elmasian: Well, I hate to say it but that’s also because that’s where the money is, right?
Brian Scanlon: Right.
David Elmasian: I’ve read some of those same studies and it does still say, that I think, what is it, like something like 70% of the wealth in this country is in the Baby Boom generation still, right?
Brian Scanlon: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Elmasian: And I know the Millennials are very upset about that, but-
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, but it’s going to pass down.
David Elmasian: Yeah, exactly or they hope, right?
Brian Scanlon: Right.
David Elmasian: So, like you said, I think there’s a lot of like even in one of my businesses, most of our customers are 50, 60 plus and you’re absolutely right. I would say, not in every case, but the ones that are on social media, they’re definitely on Facebook.
Brian Scanlon: Right and if the money’s with them, you want to market to the purchasing power, right, and if that’s where they are, that’s where we’re going to market. So I think Facebook is something to invest in right now as a business. It’s very inexpensive to get a lot of eyeballs on Facebook and you can target really, really specifically.
Everybody’s up in arms about the data they’re stealing from us, but I mean, for me, it’s awesome. I can target a guy in a podcast booth and get ’em and I’ll get that hit, so that’s another trend for me is finding that older demographic on that because I think with the younger side too, kids are changing what they’re on so much. Oh this one’s cool today. That one’s cool … Like there’s been social networks that have been built up and died that you’ve never even heard of.
David Elmasian: I’m sure, yeah.
Brian Scanlon: And they were great with the Millennials or with the 20-year-olds or whatever it is and sticking to this Baby Boomer group, if they got the credit card that has the money on it, that’s where you put the money.
David Elmasian: That’s where you got to go.
Brian Scanlon: That’s your market.
David Elmasian: Yeah, like you said, younger people are going to hop around and come across all kinds of stuff and really, can you monetize that as a business? Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Depends on what you do, obviously, but it always makes me think of like I said, I had a conversation with somebody just recently. We were talking about TV and how older people watch TV and younger people really don’t watch TV. They get stuff but they get it in different ways and I remember, one of my sons, I said to him, well how are you watching the football games because I know he doesn’t have like cable and all that stuff. He said, Dad you really don’t want to know and I’m like, okay I won’t ask anymore.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, I watched the McGregor UFC fight on Twitter, maybe illegally but we got the end of it. We got the end of it so you can consume content in so many ways now. It might be a little overwhelming to some, but if you target the right people from a business standpoint, you can get in front of so many eyeballs that you just can’t do it in any other way.
David Elmasian: Well I think one of the things that rings true with me is no matter what the medium is, people are always going to be looking for a good story or something that’s interesting to them and we used to talk about books. I’m not saying books are going away, but why do people read books? Yeah, they read ’em for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes for educational reasons and otherwise, but it was also because it was interesting. It’s something that’s kind of fun.
Well some of the stuff you see on Facebook although can be both disturbing and interesting at the same time. It’s just another medium for us to find that information. Just like older people watching TV. That’s the medium that they’re comfortable with, but it still boils down to the same stuff. They still want to find stuff that’s interesting and when they know people are watching that thing, that’s when advertisers are going to say hey, I got these eyeballs on it, so it’s no different.
Brian Scanlon: Exactly, yeah. I think a great play right now is, we mentioned that transfer of wealth, right, so somebody has to transfer that money to the Millennials.
David Elmasian: My kids are still waiting every day, you know?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah, but financial services companies should be kicking’ butt on Facebook because you get in front of these people and say hey, you need help setting up whatever it is to get your kids this money. Like something simple like that.
David Elmasian: Well but I think financial services tend be one of those, which I think in a good way, they tend to be more conservative.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah and there’s regulations and things, but there’s still ways to get in front of those eyeballs and you’re right, they are a little more regulated but it’s something that you can totally take advantage of because that’s your audience, you know?
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Brian Scanlon: It’s all about finding the audience.
David Elmasian: You know, that’s a perfect way to end things. So you know what, Brian? You told us a great story. I know we could talk for hours and hours on this stuff. I mean, the things that you talk about and the things that you do is very interesting, but before we wrap things up, is there a way for people to reach you and to reach out to you?
Brian Scanlon: Yeah sure. So @PostedSocial on-
David Elmasian: I was going to say, do you have some social media stuff out there?
Brian Scanlon: We actually do. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are kind of our three. If you search out me on LinkedIn, it’s BScanlon1. You could email me, Brian, [email protected]. If anybody has an idea they want to pitch to Marc or if anybody has a need for social media, reach out. We hear pretty much everything except the chainsaw fork guy, so everything else, we’re good.
David Elmasian: Well we’ll avoid him.
Brian Scanlon: Yeah.
David Elmasian: So, Brian, thanks for joining us on the Hub of Success. Thanks for sharing your story and we really enjoyed and learned a lot listening to you.
Brian Scanlon: Thank you. Wish you all the best.
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