The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 113: David Meerman Scott – How Donald Trump Has Mastered NewsJacking

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

Episode 113: David Meerman Scott – How Donald Trump Has Mastered NewsJacking David Meerman Scott is a remarkable leader… I really appreciate that he’s actively seeking out opportunities to learn, grow, and help others. On this episode, I learned a great deal about Newsjacking – what that meant and how we all can do it.  I also learned a lot about how David became a world class speaker commanding over $25,000 per hour.  We had a fascinating conversation on this episode of The Learning Leader Show. David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list with over a quarter of a million copies sold in more than 25 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, “New Rules” is now a modern business classic. He is the author of ten books and the series editor of six. His other international bestsellers include Real-Time Marketing & PR and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead (written with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan). His latest book is The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business. Episode 113: David Meerman Scott – How Donald Trump Has Mastered NewsJacking Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “I Help People Understand How To Reach Buyers In The New Age Of The Web” In This Episode, You Will Learn: Being incredibly curious and not afraid to try something new leads to sustained excellence How Donald Trump is a master at news jacking The power in building a substantial platform Seeing patterns that others don’t – how to do it The importance of being fearless in your approach to the market Newsjacking – injecting your thoughts into the current hot topics Creating multiple streams of revenue – how to do it How to get paid speaking gigs Taking equity over cash for advisory roles Hiring a speaking coach even when you’re one of the best in the world Walk on stage like Mick Jagger A learning leader recognizes that they don’t have it all figured out and never will  “I Saw Patterns That Nobody Else Was Seeing” Continue Learning: Go To: DavidMeermanScott.com See why over 122,000 people follow David on Twitter: @dmscott Read: The New Rules of Marketing & PR To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector W/ Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing David Meerman Scott on the show, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From DavidMeermanScott.com David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list with over a quarter of a million copies sold in more than 25 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, “New Rules” is now a modern business classic. He is the author of ten books and the series editor of six. His other international bestsellers include Real-Time Marketing & PR and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead (written with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan). His latest book is The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business.

I saw patterns that nobody else was seeing, starting back in the late 1990s. I saw the pattern that what marketing is on the web is not about advertising, like everybody else was saying it was, but it was about content. And the reason I was able to understand it is because I had already had 15 years of understanding what content is and how it worked, real-time content and how it worked on the basis. of having been a bond trader and on the basis of having been a marketing person at real-time information companies. So I was really, really lucky to be able to have the experience that allowed me to see the patterns that nobody else was seeing. Because at that time, nobody was saying that marketing on the web is about content.

Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other success. successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to the Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, before we get to this great conversation, I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Mizan and Maine. You'll probably remember from episode 64, I spoke with a CEO of Mizan and Maine, Kevin Lavelle, and we promised to continue that dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have, and we formed a partnership. And Kevin and his

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Hey, and welcome to the learning. leader show. I am Ryan Hawk. Really excited about tonight's featured leader is David Mirman Scott. He is the author or co-author of 10 books, three of which are international bestsellers, including the new rules of marketing and PR, as well as news jacking. Those are the two primary books we discussed during our conversation tonight. He's also an advisor to some of the most successful businesses in the world, and he's a top-rated keynote speaker who's able to charge $25,000 per speech. We got a number. that aspect of his business and his revenue streamed, which I found fascinating. A few of the other

things we got into, the importance of being incredibly curious, mixed with having no fear. And I enjoyed this part of our conversation because David does a good job of expanding on curiosity and fearlessness. And I found it to be really interesting. And then how Miley Cyrus embodies great leadership. I had a ton of notes prepared for this. conversation with David. I've watched his speeches. I read a ton of things about him. This is one aspect that I did not think we would go to. And I love that Miley Cyrus is one of the examples he used. And then why it's important for all of us to invest in a coach and the impact his speaking coach has had on his life and how that relates to all of us. And we can all learn from that

experience that he's had. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's David Mirman Scott. David, thank you so much for being here. Excited to have you on. the learning leader. So got a quick question to get us rolling, and that's around people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. You're definitely one of these types of people. You've spent time around a lot of those types of people, and I'm curious. What are some of the common characteristics that people who have sustained excellence all seem to share? Thanks, Ryan. It's great to be here on the show. I love speaking about excellence, and it's really great to be here. So, gosh, what I see a lot are people, and I'm

I sort of think of this as around myself, too, people who are incredibly curious, people who are not afraid to try something new, people who are eager to learn something new. And in my mind, these are some characteristics that I think I have and that I see in other people, where I think that lots of people fall down on how to move forward, especially is this idea of fear. You know, they're used to something having been a certain way. They don't like to change. They may not even be conscious of this, but essentially what they're talking about is fear. Now, I don't want to venture into politics.

I think it's always a bad idea on a podcast of venture into politics. But I would say that some of the discourse going on in our political world right now with the presidential primaries have been around who's fearful and who's not fearful. And, you know, erase that fear, push forward, get curious. learn something new and you're off and running. And I think that's true of the leaders that I'm familiar with. In fact, I spent time in the last two or three months up in New Hampshire. I live in the Boston area up in New Hampshire going to visit the various candidates events, had a chance to go to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and John Kasich. And it was really an interesting process to see how people interact with those who,

they are looking to as potentially their leaders. Interesting, you brought them up. I wasn't going to go here, but since you did and you got to see them. Well, and I'm not talking about the politics part. Oh, I know. I know. I'm talking about the marketing and the leadership part. Absolutely. Yeah, completely get it. From seeing the marketing side of things and also witnessing the people themselves, and this is not a political show, so it's no big deal. I'm curious, who are the ones that you found to have this incredible curiosity and maybe a lack of fear? Well, what's interesting to me in the analysis I did was I focused on specifically on marketing, who was doing marketing in an interesting way.

And what I found is that Donald Trump actually was the most engaged with his audience from the perspective of Donald Trump is very, very real time. He's very plugged into his audience. And he is a master at what I call news jacking. News jacking is a concept I invented. It's how you can align your ideas to a breaking news story. And I've been speaking and writing about news jacking for about five years now. I have a site newsjacking.com where I have lots of stuff about news jacking. But Donald Trump is fantastic at this because what he does is he figures out what's going on in the news

or what's going on with what his competing candidates in the Republican nomination have said. And then he tweets out little snippet. And then the media pick up on those snippets and they talk about what Donald Trump is saying. And all of that generates free attention for him. Whereas Jeb Bush and some of the other candidates are spending a whole bunch of money on advertising, Donald Trump gets it all free because he's such a master at this idea of news jacking, this idea of real-time connection using his Twitter feed. You talk about news jacking, though.

Do you think he's got a pretty big built-in advantage because of his current platform that has been built? up over the years from everything he's done from a hit TV show to all of the money, the real estate deals, all of his business practices, and he's been in the news for many years. Do you think that's part of a built-in advantage? Because I'm trying to relate this to everyone listening to the show, to myself, to others, how they can implement news jacking. I'm sure we'll get there to this conversation, but it feels like having that advantage is certainly helpful.

Of course, of course. What you've done in the past always influence as well. what you're planning on doing in the future. There's no question about that. However, I've been doing this analysis now, actually, since 2004 presidential cycle. I've been focused on U.S. presidential politics, the marketing aspects of it now for 12 years. And what's interesting to me is that in each cycle, somebody who focuses on the newer platforms tends to have a bump as a result of doing that. And it's Donald Trump's turn. this year to figure that out. Now, yes, he did have a platform before he started this campaign,

but I'm specifically just looking at his real-time engagement. He had about around, I don't know the exact number, but around 2 million followers on Twitter when he first jumped into the race. And last time I checked, he was over 5 million. And while we're talking here, I'll just look at it again, over 5 million Twitter followers. So, He's clearly understanding, oh, no, 6.14 million Twitter followers. So he's added something like 4 million Twitter followers in less than six months that he's been running for office. So I would say that, yes, it is important in terms of where you start from as a leader. But it's also important to understand that you can't just rely on what you did in the past.

You have to really focus on what's going on in the future. The fact that he's been able to, you know, more than triple his number of followers is based on the engagement that he does. I think that's sort of a really interesting point. Agreed. You think about other people who are incredibly curious, who are not afraid to try something new, who lack fear, or at least they're able to deal with their fear better than others. Who are some other people that come to mind? And then, by the way, then also interestingly here, some of the other candidates are, basically running on last cycles playbook.

You know, when the playbook to be elected to the presidency of the United States is to spend a whole lot of money in television advertising. Right. And that's what some of these other candidates, most of these other candidates are doing. So I just look at it as being really, really interesting. Again, don't be fearful. Go with your own path. I'm going to choose a kind of a radical example here, but let's talk about Miley Cyrus for a second.

Miley Cyrus was a Disney star. She was somebody who was an employee of Disney when she had her show, Hannah Montana, you know, several years ago. And, you know, she had a large group of young, typically young girls who followed that program. And then when the show went its way and she stopped doing that, she needed to become her own person. And interestingly, she's become a leader of a sorts of a group of people who are incredibly passionate followers of what she's doing. And at this same time, she was growing up in front of our eyes and has become, in a sense, a leader of a large group of people. And she did that certainly from a platform that Disney had initially established for her, but she totally broke out from it. And I look at that as being very fearless.

I mean, the thing she's doing incredibly fearless. And in many cases, people dismiss her because of some of her actions as being a little bit on the outrageous side. But I think she's fascinating. And I think she's done an incredible job at bringing a group of people along with her. She also has an organization called the Happy Hippie Foundation, which is providing a lot of great work for LGBT community. So I think that when we open our eyes and look kind of beyond the obvious for our leaders and leadership qualities, I'm always interested in trying to find who out there is somebody who maybe isn't considered a leader. in the traditional sense, but has the skills and the characteristics of leadership that I think can work in many other industries. So, you know, what can we learn from Miley Cyrus totally

taken to social networks? She's fear, absolutely fearless. She is her own, absolutely her own person. You know, she doesn't let anyone else define her. She defines herself. She is willing to put product out there that that she believes in, even if necessarily. even if the critics don't necessarily believe in it, you know, fascinating stuff. Really interesting example you bring up. And I love that you went there because it's not what I was expecting. No. And I actually, I'm so fascinated by her as an example.

And I actually went to her show a couple months ago here in Boston. And she was playing backed by the Flaming Lips at a club, the House of Blues in Boston. I mean, this is a small, like sort of 2,000-person club. and there's Miley Assyrus backed by the flaming lips. It was incredible to be able to see her in action after having thought about her and written about her a number of different times. Have you seen the YouTube clip of her singing the song, Jolene? I have not. After people get done listening to this episode, just go to YouTube and look at that.

And man, what a voice. I just got a great voice. The one that I think really showcases her voice. voice is she has a wonderful cover of 50 ways to leave your lover. It's a Paul Simon song. Yeah. And, you know, just fantastic. So, so yeah, besides that, she's talented. But I think, I think she has interesting leadership qualities. And I don't know anyone else who would ever say that or necessarily even agree with me. But I think we can find leaders in, you know, unique places. So, David, as I'm preparing for our time together, I've read over a number of different

things. I've spent hours reading, watching videos, doing all that, and nowhere in my notes is the name Miley Cyrus. So it just goes to show you that these conversations can go a number of different areas, and I love it. It's so great. So Dave, I do want to dive into you and your story and how you've gotten to this point, you know, have written either author or co-author of 10 books, international bestsellers, and multiple editions translated into 26 different languages, a number of, I mean, just incredible stats. to back up you from an author perspective, but another, but a really interesting speaker, entertaining, educational as well. I'd love to hear from you when people ask you, hey, David, what do you do?

How do you respond to that question? How do I respond to that question? I help people to achieve their business results and personal results, and specifically, I help them understand how to reach buyers in the new world of the web. But what's been interesting about my journey, I think, is that I have been extremely lucky to have been able to experience some things that very few people were able to experience when I experienced them. The first thing was I worked on a bond trading desk in New York City. So I was able in the late 1980s to be able to be on a bond desk and use real-time information from companies like Reuters and Dow Jones on a regular. basis, which got me really thinking about how information is used in a real-time world. I hated it. I was a terrible bond trader, but I loved the information behind it, which then I gravitated to the real-time

information world. And I was Asia Marketing Director for a company called Knight Ritter. Knight Ritter was competing with Dow Jones and Writers in Bloomberg at the time. And I was based in Tokyo for seven years, Hong Kong for two years. And I had this wonderful opportunity. to experience the world, to live outside my own country, starting at age 26, to be able to have incredibly big job responsibilities at a very young age. I was the youngest director of this Fortune 200 Company Knight Ritter and was able to use my understanding of real-time information when I moved back to the U.S. back in the early 1990s, actually mid-1990s. I was able to use my understanding of real-time information to use that same kind of real-time information for marketing purposes.

Now, where the whole leadership idea comes in, I think, was that I saw patterns that nobody else was seeing, starting back in the late 1990s. I saw the pattern that what marketing is on the web is not about advertising, like everybody else was saying it was, but it was about content. And the reason I was able to understand it is because I had already had 15 years of understanding what content is and how it worked, real-time content and how it worked on the basis of having been a bond trader and on the basis of having been a marketing person at real-time information companies. So I was really, really lucky to be able to have the experience that allowed me to see the patterns that nobody else was seeing. Because at that time, nobody was saying that marketing on the web is about content. And it was way before social networking. So nobody was conscious of the idea of real-time engagement, real-time communications, because social media didn't exist at that point. And so marketing was about advertising.

marketing was about campaigns that you create content when you want to create it rather than when the market's ready. So I was really lucky to be able to see these patterns that nobody else was seeing. But I think the leadership part comes in was that I was fearless, fearless about getting those ideas out into the marketplace, even when a huge number of people were utterly resistant of these ideas. I mean, think about advertising agency, the vested interest of an advertising agency is to maintain the status quo that people have to spend a lot of money on traditional advertising. And I'm not saying traditional advertising is going away, and if it's working for your organization, great, continue to spend money on it. However, for a lot of organizations,

traditional advertising just doesn't work as well anymore. So I was the one starting more than 10 years ago. I was the one who was jumping up and down saying, hey, you know, this stuff marketing on the web is about reaching people as they're going to search engines, about reaching people as they're looking for products and services to buy, as they're looking for companies to do business with. And so I fearlessly pushed my ideas out there even with active resistance from vested interests. And now, fast forward more than 10 years later after I first started doing that. And, you know, there's tons and tons and tons of people who now recognize that that is the way the world is going, that we do engage instantly in social networks, that if a company

is mentioned on Twitter, they can see that instantly. If somebody changes their LinkedIn status to reflect that they have a new job, that's a sales signal for a company that might be doing business with that individual. So lots of things have changed as a result. but I think I was lucky in where I started and how my career path went, and then I was fearless in implementing what I saw as the new patterns of the world. One of the things you mentioned, and you've written a book about this, and there's a lot online that you have about this, that you said that the phrase you coined is news jacking. Yeah. And you mentioned how Donald Trump is great at news jacking. And I spoke with Ryan Holliday a little bit about some of this as well, who wrote the best-selling book, Trust me.

I'm lying, which is, which, you know, there's some similarities here. If you search for each of your books in Amazon, they both will pop up. And I'm curious, not for the Donald Trumps of the world or for people who already have a platform, but people maybe who don't have as big of a platform, how they could implement news jacking into their work. So let's just, for example, here to make it easy, and I do this often, say it's for the case of me and my, and what I've got going on here at the Learning Leaders Show. a little bit of a platform, certainly not on a level of a Donald Trump, but somebody who obviously

is looking to generate media coverage, positive earned PR, so to speak. What would be your advice from a news jacking perspective, or maybe there's something in addition to that for me and the Learning Leaders show? Okay, great. So like I said earlier, news jacking is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story and Ryan knows the concept really well and has used it himself. And so I think the idea here is that for you, you need to inject your expertise into a story that's happening in the world. Now let me start by just giving an example of somebody who was listening to me speak, just like

many people are listening to this podcast right now, hearing about these ideas of news jacking, and then realize, wow, I can take advantage of these ideas in my own business. And his name is Trent Silver. He happens to be a 22-year-old entrepreneur. And he runs a business called Cash for Perses. Cash for Perses is an online business where he buys people's used handbags, Prada and Louis Vuitton and other high-end used handbags, fixes them up and then on-sells them either through eBay or through boutiques. And his biggest challenge is he needs to get more purses and handbags to be able to sell.

His biggest challenge is getting more stock. So he looks at what's going on in the news on the basis of understanding this idea of news jacking, which he learned from me. And he was then able to say, wow, I can find people and stories going on in the news that I can tie my business to, which is exactly what news jacking is. So just one example he shared with me was that he learned, as we all did, that Lindsay Lohan was having money trouble. She was having trouble paying her bills. It became a really big story. So he did a blog post where he offered to buy Lindsay Lowen's used handbags. Now, this was perfect because every time she was photographed, Lindsay Loewan had a big old handbag over her shoulder. And here is Trent Silver saying that he's going to buy the handbags and help to make her financially secure. And as a result of that, he got in tons of publications. He got in People Magazine.

He got in The Inquisitor. He got in Radar Online. He got in The Huffington Post and a whole bunch of other ones. Because all of those journalists were looking for another angle on the story of Lindsay Lohen having money trouble. So what they then wrote their stories, and when the stories were online, they actually pointed to Trent Silver's business, direct link to cash for purses. This generated 8,000 online inquiries from Trent's business. 18% of them closed for new business for Trent, and he generated a quarter of a million dollars from this one news jacking,

this one time that he focused on Lindsay Lohen generated a quarter of a million dollars. He's 22-year-old entrepreneur. So that's the idea of how news jacking works. Now, what I would do if I were you is I would look for stories that are breaking right now. now that have a leadership component to them. So you could keep your eyes and ears open for example about how a company is in the process of replacing their CEO, or maybe they fired their CEO for whatever reason, or perhaps you could tie to the presidential primaries in some way about leadership and the presidential candidates. Or you could focus perhaps on the MBA.

programs, educations, and when MBA programs, for whatever reason, get into the news, there's a leadership component or perhaps isn't a leadership component to MBA programs. Any one of these could potentially be a story that when it breaks if the world is talking about it or your target market of potential leaders is talking about it, what you do is you then create a real-time piece of content. It could be a blog post. It could be a YouTube video. video, it could be tweeting using the proper hashtag, or you could create, you know, since you're in the audio game, you could create a really quick audio, almost a teaser for your program relating back to that breaking news story. And if it's done cleverly, and, you know, for example, the CEO of whatever, Coca-Cola just resigned because of some leadership-related issue, and all of a sudden you're the first person out of the gate. talking about leadership and in some way referring back to the leader of Coca-Cola just losing their job,

then all of a sudden you can become someone who gets quoted in the press. They can even take your blog post comments directly from the post without even talking to you and drop them into their stories. And that's how you can use news tracking to generate attention for what you're doing and for the podcast. What do you think about writing on your own platform versus a place like the Huffington Post, for example, which is a platform that I'm fortunate to be able to write on. So what would you say? Would you prefer just on your own or somebody else's?

I would err towards your own platform, but I would certainly push it out on Huffington Post as well. The reason I say to err on your own platform is because, and I also write for the Huffington Post and some other publications, by the way, so I know what you're going through when you're thinking about that choice. I think that you're much, much more likely to get quoted in the press if you're not seen as a reporter for a competing publication. Is the New York Times going to quote a reporter from the Huffington Post? I think they're much more likely to quote someone's individual blog or somebody who's a podcaster than they are to quote someone who's writing for a competing online publication. Let me give you a specific example of something I did. And as we're recording this podcast, it's the same week of the New Hampshire primary.

And on Tuesday of the New Hampshire primary, what I did was I had visited a number of different campaign events in New Hampshire, which is just about an hour's drive from where I live in Boston. And I'd seen Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio and John Kasek and a number of these events. I wrote a really detailed blog post on Tuesday talking about the marketing aspects of the different campaigns with a bunch of photographs, and it was a very long, intricate, detailed blog post. Pushed that out. I also put it on the Huffington Post, by the way. I did both.

But here's an important tip for you, because you also write for Huffington Post. I use different headlines for the two different stories because I didn't want them both. to appear in the same search engine results if somebody was looking for somebody to quote. So, in other words, I had two separate stories, even though the research was essentially the same. And then I pushed that out on Tuesday, put it out on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Google Plus, so there are a bunch of different things pointing back to the original story. And it was one of the most popular blog posts I've written in the last year. People really loved the idea that I had gone up to see these different events and that I was putting it out exactly on the day that New Hampshire was voting because I was talking about the New Hampshire primary.

I did not get in any means to media as a result of this, but I did generate lots and lots of attention for me and my business and I wouldn't be surprised where I sold a bunch of books as a result. And perhaps even might end up booking a speaking gig as a result of doing this. You mentioned selling books, speaking. I know you do a lot of advisory work as well. Are those your three primary sources and streams of revenue as those three different areas? I actually have four streams. I sell a lot of books. I've got a bunch of international bestsellers, the New Rules of Marketing and PR, which the book I'm best known for, is sold 350,000 copies so far in English.

It's in its fifth edition, which just came out in October. And it's also available in 28 other languages. So I'm fortunate that unlike most business book authors, I actually make. some real money from my books. You know, a lot of authors don't because the royalties are so small. If you sold 350,000 books, like, with all the other fees and people that get paid out, how much do you make per book? Figure $2 a copy.

Okay. All right. So that's just kind of across the board, most people that are. It's just a rule of thumb. If you publish with a recognized business book publisher, like I've published with Wiley, a lot of my books are with Wiley. They're the largest business book publisher in North America. I've also published with MIT Press. One of my books, Marking the Moon, I published with MIT Press. And it depends. Is it paperback or hardback? You know, what's the retail price point of the book?

But figure rule of thumb, just like, you know, toss it out there, $2 a book. Okay. What about self-publishing? Would you be able to keep more of the money that way? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Have you ever considered that? My first book was self-published, so I have self-published. Yeah, you keep 100% of the revenue, unless you have a distribution partner and you keep a percentage. And, you know, Amazon will take some if you sell through Amazon. But you can certainly make more money. But then you've got so many other things you have to do. I mean, you have to pay to have the book designed. You have to pay to have the book proofread. You have to pay to have the book-marketed. You have to pay for everything related to, and printing, by the way, a lot of money and have it printed. And so all of that has to get done. And also, it's much harder to get your book in international markets if you self-publish. You know, my books are in probably 50 or 60 different countries in 28 different languages. So, you know, I'd be going through a bookstore. And I like to do

this is actually really one of my little hobbies is I'll be in a country like I was recently in Dubai. And I was in Dubai and I went into a bookstore and there's three or four copies of my different books sitting in a bookstore in Dubai. You can't do that if you self-publish. So, yes, there's lots of different ways to get books out. So the area that I make the most money in terms of my revenue is paid speaking gigs. I speak all over the world. I do on average about 30 paid speaking gigs every year. I've spoken in 41 different countries, all seven continents, which I love, the fact that I've spoken.

Antarctica as well. And I really dig it. I enjoy being on a stage. I serve as an advisor to SaaS-based marketing and sales software companies, for example, HubSpot, Expert File. I was on the Eloqua Board of Advisors before they were acquired. So those are sorts of businesses that I serve as an advisor for. And incidentally, I take equity, not cash, with my advisory work. So I'm in, you know, My skin is in their game, and if they do well, I do well. And then the fourth area of revenue for me is actually a new area just in the last two months. And it's a really exciting area, which is I just started an online learning school. My first course came out in December.

It's about newsjacking. And it's at www.newjacking.com. and it's a self-learning course that people can take to learn how to do news jacking. I love it because it's hard work to put it together. I mean, I've got eight different lessons in average of six pieces of content each lesson, and the majority of the pieces of content are video. And it takes a long time to put it together. But once it's put together, then it's a revenue source that I can just have an ongoing revenue source.

And I like to say making money while I sleep, you know, people subscribe. So, you know, passive income, people subscribe to that course. And I'm in the process of figuring out what the second course is that I'm going to push out with that school as well. But those are the four areas of revenue that I have for my business. I assume something around the new rules of marketing and PR is simply based on the fact that you've sold so many of those books, that there's an audience that's already been built, a tribe, so to speak. Well, one of the challenges is that book has lots and lots and lots of different ideas in it. News jacking is a discrete thing that you can learn that, you know, it's focused on one particular technique, and it lends itself beautifully to an online course. The New Rules of Marketing is an enormous topic and an enormous subject.

So I'm trying to actually don't have the answer right now about what the next course is. if I tackle the new rules of marketing and PR as a course, it's a big-ass course. So we'll see what I end up doing. I got to talk to me about your public speaking because I've watched your videos and preparing for this and obviously you do a great job. And what was that, where have you, like how do you develop that skill? I'm really getting into this right now personally. So I love to hear from others who, how it was at the beginning versus how it is right now and some of the things along the way in order to that maybe there's little tips and tricks I could tease out that have helped you become a great public speaker?

Yeah, thank you for saying that. I am a huge student of it. It's very, very important for me to do as great a speech as I can. I fortunately have been able to develop some skills and am able to do a presentation that typically I'm not rated the top speaker when I do speak at a call. conference or an event. So, you know, going back, I actually started doing Toastmasters, which is a great sort of, I guess you'd call it a club of like-minded people who help one another to develop public speaking skills. And I was in a Toastmasters club in Tokyo starting way, way, way back in 1989, actually 1988, I think. And so I started my journey of learning how to be a good public speaker

back in 1980, I can't even count how many years ago that was. And I was focused on developing the skills around public speaking. I did that for about six years. I did a bunch of speaking for my work when I worked for companies. I was able to develop that way. But it wasn't until about 2004 or so that I started to speak for money, and I was running my own business. And initially, it was a small honorarium of a couple of thousand dollars and I'm up to now if I do an international keynote it's $25,000 plus travel but at that time I realized that I needed to get better at public speaking so I really became a student of it I read books about it I would practice it and then in about 2007 or so roughly 10 years ago I think might have been 0607 I

connected with a fantastic guy called Nick Morgan and Nick is my speaker coach. And I've been using a speaker coach now for almost 10 years. And what's great about Nick is he is a fantastic teacher for public speaking. And, you know, just like a professional athlete, even though they might be the best athlete in the world, still has a coach. I think it's important for me to have a coach, which I do. And my final sort of thought on how I've developed my public speaking skills is I look a lot at public speakers who are good and see what they do and how they do it. I had a chance, for example, on Monday, just this week on Monday, to see Bill Clinton speak. Actually, the second time I saw him speak, but this time I was literally in the front row.

I was about eight feet away from Bill Clinton as he was speaking, and I was able to see some of the skills that he used, and I was able to learn from that. But surprisingly, I've developed some of my most interesting skills, not from other people who public speak, but from rock stars. I'm a huge rock and live music geek. I'm such a geek about it. I have a spreadsheet, and it tells me that I've seen. 630 bands live in concerts since the 1970s when I was in high school. And so I try my best when I'm seeing somebody on a concert stage, a rock star, how do they move? How do they work the crowd? Where do they stand? How do they stand? What are some of the things that they're do? How do they

hold the microphone? What are some of the things they're doing that I can learn from? And in fact, I've learned a great deal from rock stars. You know, why does McJagger commands so much audience attention. What does he do that I can maybe learn from? And I've applied a number of different techniques that rock stars use in my events. I just give you one example. I will go early to the stage. I like to do it the night before. That's my preference. But if I can't do it the night before, it'll be early the next morning, and walk the stage and look for somewhere that I can stand that that's kind of unique and weird. You know, because I, learned from rock stars that when you stand on a speaker or do something strange like that,

it commands attention. So I find somewhere that I can stand. And during my presentation, I might stand on, and I will have many times stood on speakers, for example. And I have never, in 500 live events that I've spoken at, I have never seen another speaker do that, ever, never, not once. And I learned that from a rock star. So. Really interesting. Yeah. I like that a lot. You know, The other group that I've studied that I think helps develop some skill and storytelling and crafting your message is our stand-up comedians. Yeah, yeah, yep, I agree with it. I watch a lot of those YouTube clips, one, because they're entertaining, but two, because especially the great ones, they're just the way they're able to put bits together and how they eliminate all of the unnecessary language in order. So they try to scale their jokes back to the minimum number of words needed in order to get their point or their joke across.

And I think public speakers could really study those guys and learn from. But the other part you mentioned what you were saying about having a coach, if there's one thing I found that great speakers have in common is every single one of them has a coach. And I'm very, I love that because it shows because there are people out there say, I'm good. I can just study and learn, but it's just not the case. These guys out there, like you, David, who are charging top dollar for you to come and speak, all of them invest in themselves and in a coach. And I think that could, that's a great lesson for all of us, anyone listening. And for me is that if you want to be great at something, it's important to invest in yourself.

Invest in a coach to help you, to critique you, to tell you when you're doing something right and more importantly to tell you when you need to fix something. or tell you an area where you need to improve. So I love that aspect of your process. Yeah, absolutely. It's been incredibly valuable for me. I mean, I just look at, I actually charted when I started working with Nick Morgan and my speaker fees that I was collecting per speaking gig.

And, you know, it just goes up into the right, you know, the graph is going in the right direction. And I chalk that up to my speaker coach. Love it, love it, David. So one more question before we get out of here. This is all about learning and leadership. we talked about that prior to hitting record here. And I got a question for you around that.

And that is when you hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing you think of? Learning leader. I think of somebody who recognizes that they don't already have all the answers and they need to learn what's coming up next. And they need to focus on how they can make themselves better. Perfect. I love it. Is that the right answer? Well, there is no right answer.

The right answer is what you think. It's your opinion. And so I love it. So, David, I really appreciate you being here. Where would you tell everyone to find you online? So my name is David Mirman Scott. And if you Google that, you will find me and only me. And that's actually an interesting last thought here, is that when I first started to build an online presence, I realized I was not the only David Scott in the world.

There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of David Scots in the world. One of us walked on the moon. Another David Scott is a member of Congress from Georgia. Another David Scott was an Iron Man triathlon champion, and I was just not going to be able in the early days to compete with all of them. So I became unique in the world when I started using my middle name, which is Meerman, M-E-R-M-A-N. And now I'm the only David Merman Scott in the entire planet,

so Google my name and you will find me. If you want to know more about news jacking, it's newsjacking.com. I have some free videos. I have some free infographics, a bunch of stuff. stuff you can grab at newsjacking.com. Perfect, David. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

I definitely want to continue this conversation as we both progress. There's a lot here, and I know I can learn a lot, and our listeners will learn a lot from this conversation. So thank you so much. My pleasure, Ryan. Thanks very much. Thanks, David. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in

until next time. Head over to LearningLeadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.