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Tips on how to build community and superfans with Adam Schaeuble
- To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
- It’s not my Million Pound Mission, it’s our Million Pound Mission.
- Circular viralocity sucked me in. And the basic idea is that you take a confusing social media situation, but you just even things out and aim everything at one piece of content.
- Adam’s podcast and Instagram Ninja move strategy.
- I want it to be truly authentic. I want people to see the good, the bad and the ugly.
- So nurture that relationship, connect with them, and let them know that you are there to help and you really truly do want to make an impact.
- So it’s a value-add first. Give first and then you’ll build the relationship. The relationship is the asset. And you never know, it could turn into a referral.
- I’m not a big believer in fake it till you make it.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Doug: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. This episode is not only going to be really marketing and really fast, but it’s going to be really fun. My guest in studio, joining me today is a friend of mine and fellow podcaster. It is Adam Schaeuble. Now, I met Adam at the New Media summit that Steve Olsher put on in May of 2018, and we’ve continued our discussions, and I’m part of a podcasting mastermind with Adam. But Adam and I share a number of similarities. If you ask Adam when you first meet him, he says, “I’m Adam and I’m PHD,” and PHD stands for Previously Heavy Dude. So he is the host of a top-ranked fitness podcast, The Million Pound Mission.
He had reached a point in his life where he was over 327 pounds and started to have all sorts of health challenges, so he decided to overhaul his life and his fitness, and ended up losing over 100 pounds. And from that, he felt inspired from what he learned and he took that learning and he wanted to share that with others because people could see what he’s doing. So you may say, “Well, that’s nice and that’s great for Adam, but what does it have to do with a marketing podcast?”
Well, I think there’s a lot of lessons to learn here in terms of how Adam grew his business and the challenges, and what he learned from Facebook and Facebook Live and live casting, and now podcasting. So I’d encourage you to tune in, listen in, and be ready to have some fun.
Doug: Hey Adam, I’m super excited to have you on the show today. Welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today.
Adam Schaeuble: Doug, it’s going to be Real Marketing Real Fast, really awesome today, brother. I’m fired up.
Doug: Well, everything with you is really awesome. You’ve got great energy, and it’s just a blast to be able to hang out with you today.
Adam Schaeuble: Oh yeah, man, we’re going to bring it. I’m a fan of you and your stuff, and you’ve helped me a ton. So hopefully, I can add a little bit of value to your audience as well.
Doug: We talked a little bit before we started recording in terms of what you’ve done and how you built your community. So do you want to share your philosophy and what approach you’ve taken, and why you’ve gone down that road?
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. I’m a big believer in community and connection, and it all kind of starts with my own personal story. My podcast, I refer to myself as the PHD, the Previously Heavy Dude. And that’s because I used to weigh 327 pounds, and I went through my own transformation journey, and I lost over 100 pounds, which I formed a business out of that. I started a local boot camp here, I started a brick and mortar gym in my hometown because people started asking me about, “Well, what are you doing? Can you help me do what you’ve done? You look amazing.”
So I started helping other people, formed the gym, formed of the boot camp, and we ended up doing 35,000 pounds of results in five years in my hometown. 15 people lost over 100 pounds. I lost over 100 pounds. We were crushing it. And then I wanted to go bigger, but I didn’t want a franchise. I’ve always known like I don’t want to be in charge of a whole bunch of people. I don’t want to be the boss of a bunch of people. That just does not sound exciting to me at all. As you said, I’m too full of energy and knowing … it’s just very annoying.
If I have a bunch of employees, it’s just annoying for them. They’re like, “He’s got this new idea. Oh my God, he’s doing another thing.” I knew that was not the way I wanted to go, so I started podcasting and I created the Million Pound Mission. So I guess the moral of the story is, my story became the main point of the marketing. That’s kind of the tip of the spear so that I can relate with the people that I’m trying to help. It’s the, “I’ve been there too. I know what you’re feeling. I’ve walked the path that you’re currently walking and I know how to escape it. I know how to veer off in the direction that you want to go. And we’re in this together.”
It’s not my Million Pound Mission, it’s our Million Pound Mission. I feel like in today’s world, we talked about this a little it’s kind of like just spray and pray marketing of like, “Let’s just see how many people we can contact and just see who opts in and let’s get some credit cards going. ” With what I do, I feel like you can always have an advantage when you actually connect with an audience member, or you maybe give somebody a free 15-minute coaching call, or you do a live cast and you interact through Q&A.
But just forming that connection, forming that community, you can nurture those people and they will be super fans. So with my podcast, I tried to connect with people and I answer emails and things like that. And that one person becomes a super fan, they go and tell 10 other people about the show, and then the audience grows. So that’s kind of the main point, is the connection, the community. That’s what I’m really big on, Doug.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Doug: Well, I was hoping you weren’t going to mention about the super fans because I find that really works. I didn’t want anyone else to know.
Adam Schaeuble: Top secret.
Doug: There we go. Don’t do that, listeners. Don’t connect with people because they’re going to go shout out your business and highly recommend you.
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. Terrible idea.
Doug: So let’s go back and talk just briefly about Facebook because you hear guys like Gary V and a variety of other saying Facebook’s the only place you should be advertising. I don’t put all my money into any one bucket, but I do for some Facebook advertising. But it was interesting your experience. So why don’t you just share that with our audience?
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah, I had a Facebook epic fail, crash and burn marketing experience. It was a lesson learned. I feel like I’m the guy that’s out there like I’m the windshield of the universe and all the bugs hit me first, and then I can tell everybody else like, “Oh, let’s make this slight adjustment.” I kind of went all in on Facebook when I first launched my gym because we were creating so many amazing transformations. You do 35,000 pounds of results in five years, there’s a lot of great before and after pictures there. And we would blast them out on Facebook and get a tremendous response.
This is back in the day where you posted something, and this is before even like business pages were really a thing. And I put it on my personal page and 80% of the people that were my Facebook friends would see it. We were getting massive amounts of shares, comments, just a huge amount of just viral sharing going on. And fast forward to when the Facebook algorithm started to happen, they started getting fancy on us and now it’s like 6% of the people, and all of us rush out to do the Facebook business pages. We all rush out to do that and they kind of do the old bait and switch, and now we have to pay to boost our posts and things like that.
So nobody was seeing my transformations and that was my number one way to get the word out about my gym. This is pre podcast era, all that. And it really hurt. With my energy, it kind of flows like a creek, the water finds that path of least resistance. I have this message burning inside of me, I know I can help people. It’s not something where it’s like, “Well, I think I might be able to help a few people with their diet nutrition.” I’m like, “No, I’ve proven that. It’s in my gut. It’s burning in my soul. I absolutely know I can help people, and my message must get out there.”
And that’s when I started shifting to the medium of podcasting because that was just that that next way for me to communicate with an audience that was out there, even outside of my hometown. So that was a lesson learned of being able to shift on the fly, not putting all my eggs in one basket marketing wise, and also being wary, Facebook owns their platforms, so if it’s a platform that you don’t own, you have to be careful because they could change the rules on you real quick.
Doug: Amen. Thanks for saying that. I’ve been saying, “If you don’t have people on your list, and you haven’t backed up your list, your most valuable asset is at risk.”
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah, 100%, man.
Doug: But good for you. You were using Facebook, you had a massive success on Facebook. Facebook changed the business model from a free to pay to play, so you just changed platforms. So lots of times, as marketing people, we’ll go, “Oh, it’s not working, we’ll just put more effort into it.” But you realized that that wasn’t the direction. So you just said, “Fine, I’ll move over here and I’ll build a new audience.”
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. and something also interesting that I may even pick your brain on this later, Doug, this may me be a good episode for you to do, because I know that you have a passion for health and fitness as well, is that Facebook made it even harder for me because you cannot put money behind a transformation picture posts because people are faking them. And so people like me that are actually producing these things are just out of luck. I can’t even boost a post with pictures in it.
And people had suggested like little backdoor strategies of, “Go to my website,” and then boom, there’s a bunch of pictures there. I just don’t want to get my account shut down. They made it even harder on me, Doug.
Doug: Well, I did have my health and wellness account shut down my Facebook. I was trying to pick a picture that would be approved by Facebook, so I picked somebody that looks like middle America, middle age woman, not skinny, not fat, just kind of normal looking, standing in shorts and a tee shirt on a scale. And they said that people found that offensive. I’m thinking, man, most of the pictures are, “Hey, look at my necklace,” and they got these high pictures looking down a girl’s shirt.
I’m going, “No, this woman’s full of grafts. This is a normal person.” But anyhow, that’s a whole another story. So you moved from Facebook to podcasting, but you’re not only just working the podcast, you’ve got a couple of podcasts, you’re doing lots of stuff on Instagram. Why don’t you share how you’re building community now in these different platforms?
Adam Schaeuble: I’m looking to, like I said, to connect, to coach, to impact and I just test these little avenues. I love Instagram because I see so many people that are getting frustrated with Facebook and they’re migrating to Instagram. It used to just be a younger demographic, and the people that I typically coach are female, it’s like 80% female age 35 to 65. So starting out, those weren’t the people on Instagram, but now I see them migrating there, so I’m just going, “Okay, this is the right place to be right now.”
Adam Schaeuble: I also love that Instagram continues to adapt and add pieces so that they are able to compete against other popular platforms like Snapchat, was dominating that, that quick video that goes away market, and then Instagram, actually Facebook, who owns Instagram, tries to buy Snapchat, they turn them down. So they say, “Okay, we’re creating Instagram stories.” And the same thing, it’s the exact same thing, but it’s all on one platform. And they had Instagram TV, and they have Instagram Live. So they have basically your posts, you’re live, your Instagram TV, and Instagram stories.
There are four components there. I see a lot of people get lost in the weeds. I’m a big fan of Brendon Burchard. I love his stuff. I did one of his online courses where he teaches what he calls circular viralocity, which I’m a huge fan of, made up words, so I was in. I’m like, “I’m in, that sounds amazing.”
Doug: Yeah, I got that by your PHD when we first met down in San Diego. What a smart guy.
Adam Schaeuble: It wins people over. They’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s the PHD.” They remember it. Circular viralocity sucked me in. And the basic idea is that you take a confusing social media situation, but you just even things out an aim everything at one piece of content. So what I chose as the tip of the spear now was the podcast, because I was getting a deeper connection with people that were listening to my show. I was getting all these emails of, “Adam, I went back to the beginning and I’ve listened to every show, and now I’m approaching 200 episodes.”
So these people that are hardcore. If they go back and listen to 200 episodes, that’s somebody that’s interested.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Doug: That’s super cool.
Adam Schaeuble: Yes. So I’m thinking that’s the tip of the spear because that’s the piece of content. It kind of gets viral, people are sharing it, they get the real me, and they get a lot of value out of it, and it’s producing results. That’s the tip of the spear, and I think, “Okay, with my Instagram posts, with my Instagram TV, with my Instagram stories, and with my live casting, I’m going to use that, that circular viralocity, all those two components, and I’m going to re-aim everything back to the center of a podcast.
That’s been my strategy for the last several months. And now, my Instagram is growing fast. I’m approaching that magical 10,000 followers. The big deal about Instagram with 10,000 followers is once you get that, you get the amazing swipe up feature on your Instagram stories, which will make sharing podcasts so much easier. If I could get about 1,000 of your listeners just to follow me on Instagram, I’ll be good, Doug.
Doug: All right, there we go. There’s our call to action today. Just go ahead over and … What’s your Instagram account while we’re talking about it?
Adam Schaeuble: Million Pound Mission. If you guys want to check out the strategy, you can see it in action. The basic idea is this, we’ll just use my Million Pound Mission account. With that podcast, because I have two podcasts, the Million Pound Mission podcast episode comes out on Monday, and what you’ll see is I’ll put a post up that just introduces the episode. And what I try to do is I think, “Okay, what’s the value add with this episode?” It’s not, “Hey, check out episode 45. It’s awesome.” But like, what’s awesome about it? Why would somebody want to listen to this episode? so I try to make sure in my main post, that that is the forefront of what is the value add that they’re going to get out of this.
And then I go, “Okay, click the link in my bio. You can get the episode link right there.” Then I go into my Instagram story, which only stays live for 24 hours, it falls out. And I will post a poll question that applies to the theme of the show. This week I put out an episode about making better decisions. So on Monday, I put up a poll question that said, “Do you feel like you’re a good decision maker? Yes or no?” And people start voting.
Doug: I don’t know. Let me get back to you.
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah, maybe. Not an option. I had all these people that said, “No, no, no, no, no.” And you can see who voted no. So I go back and I personally message every single one of those people, and I say, Hey, have you listened to the episode yet? I’d love to get your feedback and see if it helps you out. I hope it adds some value.” And so boom, connection, connection, connection. Then on a Tuesday night, I go live and you’ve seen my live casting, Doug. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s pretty cool. My son gets involved sometimes, my eight-year-old son.
Adam Schaeuble: Then we talk about a similar topic of decision making, and I retarget people back to the episode. And then I’ll go on Instagram TV and record a little, I’ll take one point out of the episode, like one small, two to three-minute snippet out of that, and I will record an Instagram TV and I will, at the end of that, if you want more, check out the link in my bio. You can get all the other information from the episode right there. So all these things are pointing back to the podcast, back to the podcast. And the podcast is the tip of the spear.
People start listening to the show, and they start saying, “Well, how do I get more of Adam?” And that leads down to the path of a paying customer that pays me to be their coach. So that’s the big picture, Instagram Ninja move strategy.
Doug: Well that’s really cool. And I like what you’re doing on Instagram, but I just want to back up and just comment on a couple things that you’re doing. So you identified who your customer was, your target audience or your Avatar. Listeners, the point here is that your audience isn’t on every platform. They have preferred platforms. So Adam’s figured out, “Hey, my target audience are women this age, and they’re on Instagram, so I’m going to work on Instagram.” We didn’t hear him say, “Hey, I’m going to do stuff on Linkedin,” because that’s not where my audience is, and that’s not the type of content that people are going on Linkedin for.
Doug: So good for you for identifying and focusing on where your customers are and not trying to say, “Hey, I’m going to run every social media platform out there.”
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. And that’s a mistake I initially made, I think we all do that too. But I was like, “Man, my eight year old is watching YouTube videos, not my average client.” So I was like, YouTube is probably not going to be … I don’t have time to make like fancy videos. Same thing with Twitter. I have a Twitter account, but I have like 12 followers, and my mom is one of them. That’s probably not going to count. Like you said, I felt like if I could be really good at one to two platforms. I’m like, “Most people are Facebook, Instagram, as far as the people that I work with, so that’s where I’m going to put most of my focus.” But it’s going to be a little different for each business.
Doug: Yeah. And my platforms or Linkedin and Twitter because I’m focusing on primarily a B2B market. Now, something else that I don’t want to just gloss over. So if you think of all the advertising and marketing methods and tactics and platforms that exist out there, so I’m going to ask you the question because I don’t know the answer. You mentioned people going back and listening to 200 episodes, and then what flashed into my mind is people binge listening like they binge watch Netflix?
Doug: I can’t think of any other form of advertising where people go, “Hey, I went back and I read your last 200 blog posts.”
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah, exactly. Because with audio, I was … I was talking to a new client last night. I do a welcome call with all my new people, and she is like, “I have listened to every episode. I’ve got a 25-minute drive to work, and I just listened to every single day. I’ve caught up, and now I’m waiting for each episode to come out.” Yeah, it’s viral and people … It’s easy because you don’t have to sit in front of a computer and watch anything, you can do it while you’re driving, you can do it while you do dishes. You can do it while you go take the dog for a walk.
The podcasting medium, Gary V. talks a lot about audio is the big thing, it’s the next big thing, and we should put that a little more focused towards that, and I 100% believe it.
Doug: I just remember the days that I’m not in the gym training when I’m down on my recumbent bike riding, I can listen to a couple of different podcast episodes from a couple different people that I follow. So just a great way, instead of always just listening to music, it’s good to feed the brain.
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. Brain food, bud.
Doug: There we go. So, for people listening, what do you think the biggest myth is around this tactic.
Adam Schaeuble: With Instagram, there are a few things. One is right now, people are figuring out these workarounds to get followers, and you can buy likes and you can buy followers. I’ve had two people recommend me like I’m so close to that 10,000 mark, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I got to 8,000 then I bought the last 2,000 just so I could get the swipe up feature.” I’m just like, I want it to be truly authentic. I want people to see the good, the bad and the ugly. And that’s why people get connected to me because I’m not Mr. Shiny, fancy, fitness professional, I’m the guy that stutters and messes up what he’s saying half the time.
I don’t drive a Corvette I drive a 2013 Nissan Leaf. It’s an electric car. I tell people I’ve got an electric car, Doug, and they’re like oh, Tesla, I’m like, “No, Nissan Leaf.” It’s about $50,000 less. I feel like I have to represent myself truly. A lot of people are out there kind of skipping steps. And also with my podcasting, the Podcaster Mind that coach Justin Schenck and I have formed, I want to be able to teach people legit moves on how to make these things happen. If I can’t grow it to 10,000 through my own methods, I feel like I’m not being true to the people that I’m also trying to help build their Instagram accounts and things like that.
So that’s a big myth … It’s not really a myth, it’s just some shadiness that’s happening out there. It’s just like with podcasting, you brought up the point the other day about I can have these people help me rank up an iTunes, and coach Justin lost it, he’s like, “Don’t do it! It’s ruining the ranking system!” It’s a little bit scary out there too, just to think that people are doing that. It’s a little bit shady, but with Instagram, I feel like the big myth is that people feel like they are going to … like they’re failures if they don’t have 10,000 followers the first day, or whatever.
It’s taken me three years to get the 8,000 followers, and you see all these people that have half a million, and a million followers and you think, “Well, why in the heck do they have that many and I don’t even have 1000 yet” So we start beating ourselves up over it. But you never know, that person could be buying their likes, they could be buying their followers. Or, you know, every once in a while you just get lucky. For example, one of the things that I do with my podcasts, I like to do follow up split-screen Instagram Lives, and in you and I we’ll do one of these soon also.
It’s a great way to pick up followers back and forth. I got lucky one time where I interviewed a couple that had a quarter of a million Instagram followers, and I picked up 300 followers in 15 minutes because they all watched the interview and followed my account, and they dug what I was saying. And so I kind of got lucky there. So you had those moments where, or maybe your story is featured in Inc. Magazine like Justin’s was, and his account blew up. So I think the biggest myth is that we have this false expectation that we’re going to get huge from day one, and then we start comparing ourselves to other people and beating ourselves up when we aren’t there yet.
We have to get outside of our own head when it comes to it. Just put in the work, be authentic, and just show up for your audience, add value, and it’s going to inevitably grow.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Doug: Well, I think the size of the account, if you look at just the numbers, is really what I call an ego metric. So I was like, “Oh man, look at how many followers I have.” So then I what I do, because I work with influencers and I paid people to do shout outs for clients and we have the proper disclosure disclaimer. But when I’m looking at their account, I’m more interested in the ratio of comments and likes and shares against the size of the account. So if they’ve had half a million followers, I’m looking going, “Yeah, 10 people like their picture.”
Like, seriously. So you really only have 10 followers. And I see the same thing, even in email list I’ve got 500,000 people on my email list. It’s like, “Yeah. And how many people open?” “Well, about 1,000.” Well, then you’ve got a list of 1,000.
Adam Schaeuble: Exactly. It’s who’s active, who’s interacting, who are you actually connecting with? And that kind of comes back to what we’re talking about at the beginning. It’s like, if you aren’t connecting with these people, you aren’t on helping them. Then like you said, it’s an ego metric and you’re just saying, “Look how fancy I am, Instagram.”
Doug: Well, yeah. And you’re trying to, how do you sell that as a service, like you’re saying if you can’t grow your podcast authentically? My comment in the mastermind group was I’m getting approached probably two, three times a week by people offshore that want to, “I can help you rank your podcast.” It’s like, “Well, try spelling and learning to speak, to write in English first before you’re going to even think of representing my company.” Or “Hey, your podcast about? I’ll rank you.” I was like, “You didn’t look?” Just basic business.
What are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months? I know you’re a pretty excited guy, and that’s really cool because I just love your energy.
Adam Schaeuble: I am really excited because I’m starting to pivot a little bit with my business where I’m pulling a little bit of time out of my gym. That’s up and running, it’s going strong. We’ve got a very competitive local market. When I first launched my gym in 2009, there were five competitors, and today there are like 50 plus competitors. It’s ridiculous. And we’re in a small college town, but we are doing well there. I’m pulling out of, I’m not taking personal training clients, teaching classes and things like that. I’m pulling out of that and adding more energy to the podcast, to the online connection.
I’m really psyched to kind of bring it back home. I got a tip from a friend that I interviewed, Colin Morgan who … Do you know Colin, Doug?
Doug: No, I don’t know.
Adam Schaeuble: He does the Daily Grind podcast. He’s somebody you should definitely interview. You should be on his show as well. You guys would connect well, and he’s a fellow Canadian. But he talked about doing these 15-minute coaching calls and just offering it up free to your podcast listeners. And I was like, “Wow.” You know, breaking it down to a one on one, just basics, just connect with somebody.” And he’s like, “It’s amazing. If that person doesn’t become a client, they will become a super fan. They will refer your show at an unbelievable rate as long as you’re able to just to add some quick value for 15 minutes.”
Adam Schaeuble: He used to a few of these a week, and just putting that out there that you are willing to connect at a one on one level when everyone else is like, “Come to my event and you might get to see me. You’ll have the pleasure of listening to my voice, my recorded voice every week.” But just going, “Hey, it’s me and you. Let’s go for 15 minutes.” So I’m really looking for that next level of connection and I’m really psyched about that. You know I love the Bonjoro App. If you guys haven’t tried this, I love it. It’s B-O-N-J-O-R-O.
And there are a few different companies that do it, but this is the one that I like the best because you can brand your message with my podcast, and then I put a link that people can just click on the button that goes right to my show. But it’s a video email where when people listen to my podcast, a lot of times, I guess podcasts was just don’t respond to emails. They get so many emails, they can’t respond or they have a VA responding. And I respond to every email myself. And most of the time, it’s a video message through Bonjoro where I’m like, “Hey Sally, thank you for listening to the show. I appreciate your support. Here’s the answer to your question.”
“If you need any other help, just don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be there to connect with you.” And now I can say, “Hey, let’s do a 15-minute chat on top of that.” And people were like blown away that not only did I email them, but I sent them a personalized video message, which for me, it’s actually easier than typing it all out. I can just talk and then boom, it’s good. But I feel like just taking things that next level and finding my 1,000 true fans that I can build this community around and really just make it a huge impact, just one solid transformation, one solid connection at a time.
Doug: What you’re doing, I heard John Lee Dumas and Kate speaking at an event that I was at in the Philippines with Chris Ducker. And he said something … he’s said lots of things, but the thing that I remember was he said, “Do some stuff that’s not scalable.” And so I left that event thinking, “Man, what can I do that’s not scalable?” And to your point, the thing that’s not scalable is having those one on one conversations. And so I took that to Twitter, and what I found is to your point, is I’ve got a half a dozen super fans that retweet and share my stuff.
So listeners, from a selfish point of view, if you’re looking at it for why would I do that? It’s really simple. What Adam is talking about is engaging with your fans and commenting and responding to them, and you get rewarded for that because that’s how social media and the algorithm and social media is set up is to reward engagement, and it gave me more exposure.
Yeah. And it’s like I said, it’s just something that people don’t do now, we get so caught up in the processes of how we’re going to connect with people and how we’re going to get our message out there, and we forget about the actual people that we’re trying to impact with that message. They get lost in the mix. Like, “I don’t have time to actually connect to these people. I’ve got to market to these people.” We all get psyched about marketing techniques. Anybody’s that’s listening to this show is psyched about marketing. We love the chase, but sometimes once we have that person, let’s nurture them.
Adam Schaeuble: That’s one of the reasons my gym is so successful, is that we nurture the hell out of those clients. And my best refers are the other gyms, their clients walking out their back door and into my front door because they don’t feel taken care of. So nurture that relationship, connect with them, and let them know that you are there to help and you really truly do want to make an impact. It’s much easier to keep a customer than to go and find a new one. So that’s the main focus for me for sure.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Doug: Well, and I just want to say that for those of you that are listening, thinking, “Yeah, okay, that sounds good, but I’m really busy.” I had two calls this week and I talked to one guy who connected with me on Linkedin. His name is Melvin 10. So if you connect with me on Linkedin, I do have my VA manage my account. I get eight or 10 or 12 requests a day to connect, and we try to sort out the spammers from the real people. But you get a welcome message from me saying, “Hey, great to connect. Was there something, in particular, you’re looking for? Is there a question I can answer? This isn’t a sales pitch if you want to just have a conversation and learn more about … tell me about your business and learn what I’m doing, then connect.”
And out of those connections, I normally get about two people a week that take me up on that offer. I put a link to my booking calendar, so it’s not overwhelming. I talked to Melvin, I said, “Hey, you’re in the top 1%.” I get 100 people a week or more that connect, and you’re the one guy who clicked the link and booked a time. But he went the extra mile. He set up a Zoom call, and he spent about 30 minutes giving me some tips on how I could repurpose my content into video.” And there’s no ask. He goes, “I just think you’re a really cool guy. I’ve been following you online for a while, I don’t know if there’s something we can do together, but I’d sure like to carry on the conversation.”
And I went, “Wow, that guy’s going to do really well because there was like, you’ve done a very authentic conversation.” And at the end of it, I went, “You know what, I think that the information you’re sharing is super valuable. I’d like to have you come on my podcast.” So for people that are trying to get on podcasts are trying to build relationships, there’s an example of, like you’ve said, just give, give, give, and guess what? The reciprocity shows up, and you get the reward.
Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. Adding value first is like a huge lesson that I’ve learned over the past couple of years with podcasting, especially because as podcasters, we are all on fire about our message and our show. We have those certain other shows like, “I’d be perfect for that show. They need me to be on their show. I’m their number one guest option for sure.” And then we approach them and we talk like that, and they don’t even email you back, and then our heart gets broken. I found that those shows … This is my approach with pretty much every fitness podcast I’ve been a guest on is, I eyeball a few shows, I research them, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, I probably could do well with that audience.”
I invite them on my show first every time, and I never pitch to them like, “Hey, I need to be on your show.” Everyone’s all mentioned like, “Hey, if you’re ever looking for a guest, keep me in mind. Here are some speaking topics that I tend to do pretty well at.” But nine times out of 10, they’re like, “I love the energy, man, let’s have you on.” And then I’m there. So it’s a value-add first. As you said, give first and then you’ll build the relationship. The relationship is the asset. And you never know, it could turn into a referral.
Adam Schaeuble: I’m going to do an online summit, so a lot of these guests that have been on my show before, I’m going to bring them on as professors at Million Pound Mission University, and it’s going to be a really cool event. And now we’re monetizing that relationship a little bit, but everybody is winning, and we all get to market a little bit and then get our message out there. So nurture the relationship with people that you’re in business with, people that you would like to connect with, but also, especially with the people that you’re trying to serve.
Doug: So what’s some of the bad advice you hear? You go to a lot of events as do I. I don’t know how many of you go to, but I’m assuming you’re out in the community more. I follow you around on your social media exploits, that you hear around, around this sort of tactic of marketing?
Adam Schaeuble: I’m not a big believer in fake it till you make it. I’ve kind of talked on that a little bit with the whole fake Instagram and things like that. I feel like there are way more ‘normal people’ like me out there that I can connect with than like celebrity type people, or celebrity worshiping type people. I am not renting Lamborghini’s and taking pictures in front of it, and being like, “Look how much money I made. And you can too?” I don’t believe in that. I feel like I want to be me. If I’m doing business, if I’m coaching somebody, I want to spend my time being real because if I’m not, then I’m not happy.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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I don’t just work to work, and I don’t work just to make more money. I believe in looking at more impact. The impact is the main currency. If I’m making an impact, then I’m super happy whether I’ve got 10 clients or 1,000 clients, and that’s the bottom line. So I feel like being authentic and just being you, and not being afraid to be you. Let the mess ups be out there. I love having my son on my live cast and he talks about weird stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with health and fitness.
I let him talk about two things every week. I’m like, “Pick two things, talk about whatever you want.” But it’s me and my son. Like he talks about like picking his nose or this like bug or something that he found, it was basketball practice. On a side note, as a marketing strategy, when Facebook does the little freeze frame thing for the image for a live cast, if my son is in the picture, I get way more views than if it’s just me.
Doug: Oh, child labor. That’s shitty, man.
Adam Schaeuble: The fake it till you make it, being authentic. I feel like that’s the important thing there. That’s probably one of the big misconceptions, one of the big myths that are out there that I hope gets turned around a little bit.
Doug: You said there you’re a big Brendan Burchard fan.
Adam Schaeuble: Oh yeah.
Doug: Who else do you follow?
Adam Schaeuble: Let’s see. Tony Robbins is like the … That was the first dose of real personal development I ever had. Well, very, very first was the, I watched the DVD, The Secret. That’s when I weighed 327 pounds, that DVD had been passed along to me two different times. I pretended to watch it and gave it back to my friend once, and then the second time, it had been sitting there for like two weeks, I sat, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to watch this.” Then that night I sat down and I mapped out the life that I wanted to create over the next five years, and I achieved every single goal within seven days of the date that I set five years prior, which is pretty cool.
Things like getting married and having a child, losing 100 pounds, starting a business, getting out of $40,000 worth of debt. All that was achieved. And it was through that first dose of personal growth, personal development material, but then I dove deep on Tony Robbins. I’ve spent time at his business mastery, the five-day-long event in the freezing cold. At a Tony Robbins event, if you guys ever get a chance to go, go, it’s amazing. But you start at like 9:00 AM and you finish at like 8:30 AM the next morning. You get like half an hour to sleep and that’s it. And he just goes full blast, it’s freezing cold in there because he wants everyone to stay awake.
You’re supposed to get breaks to eat and he just keeps going, and he’ll just have food brought in. They’re like throwing sandwiches into the audience, like, “Just keep going.” But it’s just insane. So I’m a big fan of his stuff. I Love Gary V., I love his energy. Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach. I was in the Strategic Coach program for six years and I got to connect with Dan a little bit. His stuff, his podcasts are really, really good, and that’s something, I guess that’s another myth that’s out there is that I feel the whole hustle thing … I feel that people take the Gary V. thing wrong, out of context a little bit.
As a business owner, I’ve worked myself into the hospital three different times, hustling, Doug. Working, not sleeping, passing out, hitting my head on things, giving myself concussions, go to the hospital. Three different times. And then I found Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan preaches free days and we have to track how many complete non-business days we take per year. And by the time I’m done with his program, six years later, I’m averaging 120 to 130 free days every year. And that is no business phone calls, no business texts, no business emails, no business reading. It’s free days. I do what I want to do that day, non-business related.
We’re talking one out of every three days of the year, compared to the guy that walked himself into the hospital three different times. That’s another myth that I hope kind of gets busted out there is that, if we aren’t rested, if we aren’t taking care of ourselves, we are the main asset, and if we aren’t healthy and thinking clearly, then we are not effective. We can’t impact people, we can’t make money, we can’t market to anybody. So make sure that we are also doing that rejuvenation, investing time in that as well.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Doug: That’s so cool. I got two big things out of there. One is that you are a student and continually learning. And so it’s important that coaches have coaches because we all need to strive to be better. And I love the free day. Someone asked me yesterday, [inaudible 00:38:25] “Well, what’s your work schedule look like?” I said, “I really don’t want to tell you.” I said, “I do try to work most days, business days, except for Thursdays and Fridays, but I need to go to the gym Monday. Monday and Wednesdays as well. But I do get a little bit of work in.”
And the answer at the end is, you don’t have to work 100 hours a week to make it work. You just need to work effectively to pick the things up that move the sales dial and make the connections and then go do what you’re supposed to do. Go hug your kids, and in my case, go play with my grandkids.
Adam Schaeuble: Exactly, man. When I tell people that I’ve got basically a four-day work week, I work Monday through Thursday and then I shut down Friday through Sunday, they’re like, “How in the world do you pull that off with all the stuff I do?” I’ve got two podcasts, I’ve got the podcast Coaching Business, I’ve got the gym and employees there, 20 employees at the gym, but you get more efficient, and you’re forced to get more efficient when you start to delegate and you start to realize that you don’t have to do everything, you have people that will step up and fill those gaps and keep things going.
And just having confidence in not only ourselves but our ability to delegate, to teach other people, to trust other people, to step up and do the work. And I love the saying that, ‘great is the enemy of excellence’. I try to focus on things that I’m excellent at Monday through Thursday, and then delegate the things that I’m good or great at, that the other people could be good or great at also.
Doug: That’s some great advice. Now, here’s the easy question for the day. How do you want people to connect with you?
Adam Schaeuble: Yes. Everywhere. I want you to connect with me everywhere. Turn on social media, find me. My face will pop up. Now, the main hub is millionpoundmission.com. Millionpoundmission.com. That’s the main hub, but my Instagram, Million Pound Mission. We didn’t talk about Facebook groups. My main use of Facebook is my Facebook group. And this is another little bonus tip with Facebook groups. I got a vanity web address, which helps a ton, because otherwise you’re like, “Go to my Facebook group, it’s Facebook.com/one, two, five, seven, eight, nine, 12 or 49.” And no one ever remembers. So I go to defeatthecheat.com, and that will forward you into my Facebook group.
And having a little catchy name helps a little bit, but if you’re kicking me on Facebook, go to defeatthecheat.com, Instagram, Million Pound Mission. Otherwise, all my stuff is Million Pound Mission, Unless you’re interested in podcasting, then do a little search for Casting The Pod on iTunes, and you will be seeing an interview coming up very soon with our friend Doug Morneau.
Doug: That’s true. I’ve heard that it’s going to happen. Our Instagram Live, my first one. So that’ll be interesting. Hey, thanks so much for taking time out of your day. I also appreciate that in respect of my being from the great white north that you’re sitting shirtless in the cold room trying to appreciate what it’s like to be living in Canada.
Adam Schaeuble: Yes. #winternipples, as you said, Doug.
Doug: I don’t think that was recording when I said that, but thanks for sharing that. Justin did warn me. He said, Adam shares some of the weirdest stuff, be careful what you say. You’ll see it on social media.”
Adam Schaeuble: Yes, it’s the best.
Doug: There we go, listeners, there’s another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast, and some of it might be really strange. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks, Adam for sharing. I would suggest, check out Adam stuff. What you hear is what you get. I met Adam in San Diego, and we got to hang out a bit and I joined their mastermind group with him and with Justin, and I’m having a blast with those guys. So check out it out, and I hope you enjoy this episode. We’ll make sure the notes are transcribed, then we’ve got links if you can’t remember the defeatthecheat.com domain name.
Doug: Check out his podcast. I’m happy to get this transcribed and get it off to you. So thanks for tuning in and I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND SUPERFANS
To build community and connection start with your own personal story.
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Get in touch with Adam:
- Web – Million Pound Mission
