RHS 004 - The Secret to Scaling Trust with Brian Fanzo

Ryan Hanley: Today I bring you Brian Fanzo. While I wanted Brian to be on the show because of his career journey, which is very much a ground and pound—he's worked for it, earned every inch of success through hard work, focus, and doing all the things you need to do—this episode takes a turn in terms of some of the topics we get into. Things that are very near and dear to my heart, in particular how we treat each other online and how, in the coming months leading up to the 2020 election, with all the anger, hostility, and division that is inevitable, we can focus ourselves to stay positive and hold love and compassion in our hearts, even when we run up against people whose perspectives we may not enjoy. I think it's incredibly important for us in life, and it's certainly important to us in business. So I am incredibly pleased and honored to bring you Brian Fanzo.

Brian Fanzo: We're doing a new job. It's good, man. It's good. Trying to find my legs. It's an interesting situation. A whole new industry. Don't know anything about basically most of what I'm doing. It's interesting how much I'm learning about what the network that I had in the insurance industry meant. One. Two, how little, once you learn the basic principles of growing a business, marketing a business, selling—the core principles of business in general—how little intrinsic industry knowledge actually means to early stage growth.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Brian Fanzo: I think middle and late stage growth, having the knowledge of the intricacies and nuances of the marketplace to separate yourself are very important. But early on, it's: what's your value proposition? Can you sell it? Can you reach a market? Can you tell a story based on what you're trying to do and who you're trying to help? That's going to get your early adopters. That's what's going to grow the business in the early stages. Eventually you have to dig in, you have to know the space you're operating in, and I think that's core. But it's been interesting that knowing nothing about fitness, not having one network connection in the fitness industry, how far we've been able to get already. So it's a fun test.

Ryan Hanley: You're going to have to write some crazy story about that side of it. When you said that originally, I was like, holy pivot. I know lots of people that have pivoted, but that's a legit pivot in many ways. It's kind of fun to hear because it's one of those things you don't know until you hear people like yourself that have done it. I wouldn't have even thought of that in many cases. But you're also right, part of it is you're good at conveying trust. There's a layer of, "Hey, I can trust you no matter what you're working with," and then once we figure that out, we better deliver on the back.

Brian Fanzo: Yeah. I think, I was listening to Naval Ravikant. He did a podcast based on a tweet storm he created. It's called "How to Get Rich" or something. It's a clicky headline, but what's underneath it is absolutely amazing. I think you'd dig it because it's an interesting format as a podcaster. It's basically two-minute episodes, two to three minutes.

Ryan Hanley: Oh really?

Brian Fanzo: Yeah. He basically takes each tweet and he's got another guy with him who gives him the core context of the tweet and says, "Can you explain this?" And he just goes into it, no more than five minutes an episode, basically what he was thinking about. So there are like 50 episodes that make up this podcast. It's really interesting.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Brian Fanzo: The content is tremendous, and the format and how he launched it and got it out and what he was trying to do with it. Since then, he's added more of these short form episodes. It's really cool.

Ryan Hanley: I'll have to check that out. I just put up the website. That's super cool.

Brian Fanzo: Yeah. Well, the point of my bringing him up is one of the sections in there that he talks about is trust. He basically says, as everyone knows, it takes being around for a while to build up trust. Once you have that, you can make a move or two, but there is a diminished return. Eventually if you hop too much, people stop trusting you because you move around too much for them to trust you. Long story short, trust me once, trust you twice. And then, wait a second, I've got to reevaluate that trust.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. That's cool. I'm always looking for creative ways of formatting, especially podcasting. Podcasting is such an interesting medium. Even for what people are doing today, we still haven't really ventured into all the different ways you can use audio formats—documentary styles and stuff. It's a fun medium. I wish I had the time and resources, like a team, to do that kind of testing and research. But I'll check that out for sure.

Brian Fanzo: Yeah. I think that will come as monetization comes to the platform. Right now, no one's going to come to you with an amount of money that will allow you the time to go out and actually put that project together, or at least it's rare.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And when they do, they usually handcuff the medium so weirdly. I just did a presentation at a military influencer conference this weekend on podcasting. I said, "I've garnered six figures of podcast revenue in the last 12 months without sending download numbers once." Everyone was like, "What the hell?" I was like, "Because I don't sell downloads. I couldn't figure out how to sell downloads." I sell alignment with brand. I sell direct business value. I sell, "Hey, I'm going to drive this many people to whatever your initiative is, but you need to give me the bandwidth and time to do it." Part of that is because when I was trying to sell the other thing, the monetization hasn't hit the platform in a way that is scalable. I worked with three different Adobe teams, and all three had a whole different idea of what podcast advertising was and how it worked. I ended up convincing all three of them to do it my way. But at first it was like, "God, I can never work in this media."

Brian Fanzo: It doesn't translate to what they're used to. The language is different.

Ryan Hanley: It's for sure. But all that being said, I appreciate you being on the show, man. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on is, we'll just get into it. It's an interview show for sure. I'm going to do a lot of other stuff besides just interviewing. The thing that drove me to make the pivot that you initially asked about was my desire to help people find peak performance in their everyday life, in whatever way, shape, or form that means for them. How do I help them find the little hacks, share things that I found, mistakes that I made, articles I found? It's a menagerie of concepts and ideas with the idea that one of them might help you get a little bit better, find that thing. In watching your career, and we've known each other for a while now in terms of being in the same ecosystem, the thing that's always impressed me about you was your ground and pound methodology. You just started doing the work, showing up, turning the Facebook Live on before anyone else was. You just kept doing it, kept grinding, kept pushing, kept telling your story. If you go back in the archives of your work, which I did in getting ready for this interview, it just brought me back to some of the things you were doing. Watching the evolution, it's so iterative. With each episode or era of your development, it gets a little more refined, a little more tweaked. Then you kind of shelf an idea for a while and attack this. I guess my first question for you, or what I'd love for you to kick this off on, is early on, like you just said, "I made six figures in podcast revenue." For most people, that's the headline. There was a day when it was zero. That's taken you a long time to get there, and you've earned every one of those dollars. What kept you going in the early days? Talk a little bit about—I'm not so much interested in the start as I am the dip. What got you through the dip?

Brian Fanzo: For me, being like we were talking a little bit about your pivot, I went cybersecurity to a data center to digital marketing. In the weirdest way, the more I reflect, the more I realize that collaboration is the root element that links everything I've done since high school. In high school, I was the only one. My family owned a frozen yogurt shop. I was a lifeguard. I tried out for plays as a thespian. I was a baseball player. I played hockey. I was the surfer dude that was also the sports dude that liked computers and also worked at a family business. That transcended into college where I was the only fraternity guy, the only computer science major, and the only one on the hockey team. No one on the hockey team was majoring in computer science, and nobody majoring in computer science was going to join a frat. For me, being able to bring groups together was always the thing. It's always been the root piece of it.

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Brian Fanzo: I worked in a government contracting company, giant 25,000 person company. Left to go to the data center, which at the time was 250—I was the 256th employee. Within two years, we had 612 employees. We were hiring 12 new hires a week. It was insane. Then I went on my own. The interesting piece for me, the dip, was I always knew I wanted to do something bigger. I love how you put that out there. For me, I always say I want to connect great people with great people to do great things. But there's no monetization on that. There's no business. There's no, "How do I package that?" I remember Jay Baer, a good friend and mentor, one day about four and a half years ago, I was kind of like, "I don't want to be an agency, but I don't want to be a consultant. Where do I fit? Who am I? How do I put some monetization around it, but also how do I grow and learn this space?" Jay said a statement to me, and I don't think he knows how much it stuck with me. He said, "Fanzo, I love what you're doing. Everyone I talk to loves what you do. My problem is I have no idea what you do or how I would sell you." I was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a problem."

Ryan Hanley: [Laughs]

Brian Fanzo: I think that was part of it. I would read things like, "You have to package things," or, "Maybe you need to sell stuff online." I had this love for building community without the desire or need to monetize the community. In my weird big picture, I tried the agency thing after the data center. I didn't really like the agency model. I'm not an agent. I deliver. I over deliver. I ground and pound. I'm a, "Hey, what's our goal? We're going to crush it." The agency model just didn't fit that. I kept my business partner who was working the agency with me. He said, "Dude, everyone you bring on, they work with us for six months and they move on. It's not because they're not happy. It's because you've solved so many goals that help them do it. They don't need us anymore." I was like, "Yeah, that's what I'm good at." He said, "Well, that's going to turn us into a business development team more than anything else." For me, it was this weird piece where I remember saying, people would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" This was within the last five years. I would say, "I was successful in everything I've done, but not one of these things was a path. I want to be a CEO of my own company. I just don't know what that company is. I don't know if it's software, hardware, online, offline. I'm going to build community for the sheer sake of caring about people and engaging as much and as hard as I can." For me, that was, "I've got to try out every medium, from live video to podcasting. I had to figure out what worked." I never thought of myself like, "Wow, I'm going to try out live video because I want to be a live video expert." It was, "Ooh, is live video going to give me an opportunity to build community not only stronger, but allow me to scale?" The hardest thing I've always known is scaling trust and scaling community has always scared me because I really do love the idea of intimate groups and connecting great people. I've learned over time that as those groups grow—from business to church group to sports group, whatever it may be—that scale is really hard. That was a big fundamental piece for me. Because I didn't want to monetize this community I was investing in, I was like, "How do I make money as I'm going through this?" When I say I didn't want to monetize, I didn't want people—it's the Gary Vee jab, jab, jab, right hook. Gary made a joke with me via Twitter a long time ago. He said, "Fanzo, you remember the right hook part exists?" Because I was really good at jabbing and giving people things without having that right hook. Part of it was because I learned that I could monetize and work with enterprise-sized companies and big brands because they would want access to the community I have without having to tell my community to buy an online course, buy my book, or hawk some webinar. When I found that out, I was like, "Oh, well, that's my whole background. My background was enterprise tech." I could tap into this network from a business perspective while still growing a community with my underlying goal of reaching the masses. That's been the path that's gotten me where I'm at today. But it's taken a lot of self-awareness. I would always say, "Be yourself." But in the last three years or so, a lot of it had to do with my divorce. I was forced to become self-aware. Now that I'm becoming more self-aware, I know what I'm not good at. I know what I'm good at. But I've also been able to look back at my decisions and realize, "Wow, if I'd only been aware of why this didn't work because of who I was, I would have made so many different things along the way." It's been a heck of a journey. I think that hopefully answers the question.

Ryan Hanley: We both have a very interesting going from crazy different careers, but I think there's also that underlying element of what drives us. Without really knowing it until you just said it, that might be one of the things that has always enamored me to your work. I've struggled with that same thing my whole life. I always say to my wife that I have a job to support my desire to create. I love—I'll tell you what I love more than anything. I wake up at 4:30 every morning and I write an Instagram micro blog every single day, six days a week. It's the 2,200 word limit. Sometimes I fill it. Sometimes I don't even come close. But it is whatever I learned the day before, whatever I came in contact with, whatever idea I think can move people forward. I do it every single day. I don't know why that platform. I just like the constraints of the 2,200 characters. It gives me something to work towards, which I could easily duplicate someplace else. I have said to my wife before, probably before the job I have today, she's like, "Why do you like to do all this other stuff, but then you do this work over here?" I'm like, "Because that work pays for me to be able to do this work because I have no clue how to monetize this work in a way that isn't courses and eBooks and paid webinars and all that nonsensical stuff." Truthfully, even when it's done with the purest intentions, I can't stand it. I just can't. It rubs me the wrong way. As soon as I see the sales copy, I start to barf. I know that's a weakness in my marketing game. I'm not willing to go copywriter, even though I can do it. It just makes me feel weird. So I never—

Brian Fanzo: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: It's funny. I never heard you say that what you just said to me before, but as soon as you said it, I was like, "Wow, that sounds super familiar." I've had that conversation in my head before.

Brian Fanzo: It's funny on that element of that weird—there's a sales element. I have no problem convincing people to give me the money that I know I'm worth. That has never bothered me. But selling something, this idea of selling something either a forced way or—there's a skill set and a mindset of the people that purchase those things. When you're neither one of those, which I think both of us kind of fall in neither one of them, it's like I love the marketing space and I despise both. I used to get so mad at the people that were marketing in that way. Then I started to flip my brain. I'm like, "Well, if no one was buying it, they wouldn't keep doing it." Then I started to try to psychoanalyze that layer. I loved to really study that human condition and what makes us do those things. Then I realized, "Oh, it's just not my personality on either side." But you're right. It's a funny mix. There's the beauty of the world we're living in. You can find your own ways. But when you jump into a space where you know the short, easy way is this way that everyone's doing, it can get extremely frustrating. To your point, I've done an Instagram story every single day since Instagram Stories were released. It's my favorite thing. You like feed copy. I wake up and I start the day and I go through this weird programmatic thing in my head of, "Okay, what does my beginning, start, middle, end look like? What should I show or how should I show something to educate people or bring them along on my journey?" I don't do written out. It's this weird process. I can feel it. Sometimes it hits me at 10 a.m., sometimes at noon. I've invested so much time. I study the analytics. I love the piece of it. But at the same time, nothing about my Instagram stories is monetizable. I'm not using it to—everyone's like, "Oh, you have the swipe up feature." I'm like, "Yeah, I usually use that for an article or a podcast. I don't use that for gated content." I'm like, "I don't have gated content." You're a marketing—it just kind of plays in different ways.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It's funny. One of the things that you talked about too in there was scaling trust. This is one of the topics that I've written about, I've talked about. It's something I think about all the time. I think it's probably the reason that we are neither the person who buys the fancy copy course nor the person who creates the fancy copy course. I feel like anytime you inject Mad Men style copy into advertising—which I think that's what the break in that is—you're going from trust to convincing. You're kind of almost bullying someone into it. You're bludgeoning them with reasons to trick their brain into clicking a button versus, "Hey, you trust me so much that I'm just going to tell you what you're going to get and you can choose." Those are two different things for me. Seth Godin sells courses on Akimbo. He's the farthest thing from a huckster marketer, even though he is a brilliant copywriter. Talk to me a little bit about how you scale trust. I'm interested in maybe start with what that actually means to you and then how you do it.

Brian Fanzo: This is one of those areas where I've never looked at—and I think it has a lot to do with my personality as well. When someone tells me what to do—my poor parents—I'm the guy, even if I wanted to do it and they're telling me to do it, I've always pushed back. I'm not like the fight the system guy. I've always just been like, "Hey, let's come together and do this," or, "Let's work in a similar path." When I look at this digital world, I remember—I've thought about this a lot. I've always looked at social media and digital and the internet as a whole as this vast opportunity to become connected no matter where we live, no matter what our background is, no matter sexual orientation, no matter what it is. You can find your people. It had a lot to do with me moving in third grade from Pittsburgh to Virginia Beach. My roots are Pittsburgh. I believe in black and gold sports. We still had season tickets for the Steelers. But because of my dad's medical condition, we had to move out of the cold weather. The internet came, and it was like, "Oh my goodness, the people that think about sports like me, I'm connected with." I remember it being this pure joy. I wanted to be a SportsCenter anchor. Then I realized you had to know journalism or be good at grammar. It wasn't my thing. I pivoted to computer science. Even looking at that element, I was like, "I like result-oriented type things, but I also loved trying things out." It was like, "Oh, well, nobody that's done this could do that. I'm the person that does it." I really like that piece of it.

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Brian Fanzo: When I started putting myself out there in this digital space—I know the date because the day I started on social media was November 2nd, 2013. My mom questioned me. I think I was venting to her on the phone about a social media post. She said she liked a post of mine. I was like, "Well, it took me an hour to write." She was like, "What? You didn't spend that much time on your homework." I was like, "Well, I wanted to make it this, this, and this." She said, "Brian, I hope you remember what's made you great and who you are offline. You're unapologetically yourself. It's been something I tried to change as a mom, and I just realized Brian's going to walk his own path and do his own things. People are going to, for the most part, take it or leave it. Those that leave it, I have that desire to—I'm going to try to come back around for them to see." When my mom said that, I got hung up. I was like, "Sure, Mom, of course I do." I hung up and I just sat there. I was like, "Oh my goodness." I didn't have a hat on in my profile picture. I had this weird persona. I remember always being like, "What do other people want to hear from me?" rather than saying, "What can I share to help other people?" That little duck—for me, that was the moment of, "You know what? I'm going to be myself. I'm going to put myself out there. Those that judge me based on my appearance or the way that I come about things, I'm going to build trust with them over the long term of caring and being a positive person." I don't inject negativity in anything I do. I don't support negative people. If someone screws me over, I don't post about it publicly. I just remove them from my circle. I don't amplify their things. I don't talk about them. Even going through my divorce, my ex was not one that was on social media posting publicly. She posted 32 times publicly about our divorce. I posted zero. It was because, "Hey, she's a great mom. She is still a great mom. My daughters are great because of her. Because of this disagreement of who we were, we grew apart." Whatever that may be, I've always looked at it as I can grow trust through being very transparent, which is one of my core pieces. I always say transparency and oversharing are two different things. Oversharing and airing dirty laundry about my divorce and things that people didn't really need to know would have been the other one. But being very transparent in who I am, what I've gone through. Beyond transparency, I'm going to care about other people just as much as I want them to care about me. I'm going to do it at the maximum that I can. When I looked at what that meant, online was just the easy path for me.

Brian Fanzo: Like I know that you can put me in a room, a networking room. And as extroverted as I am, I don't like forced conversation. You know, it's like the dad's birthday party where all the dads are standing by the grill. That gives me the creeps. I hate forced conversation. I don't even like it on the airplane. But put me in a room with a bunch of people I don't know, and I don't shut up. I don't mind talking when it's not forced.

When I looked at all these pieces, I thought, "Wow, I can do this online. I can share my content, my conversation, who I am." And I think caring is so easy online. Retweets cost nothing. Amplifying someone else's work costs nothing. It's so easy to do, and yet it's still so rarely done. So I thought, "Okay, I can do that in a way that builds trust over time."

I can tell you about some of my biggest haters, or people I had the biggest disagreements with. I just recently had a phone call with somebody who was the first person I ever blocked on social media. I remember being bothered by it. And it's come full circle. That person not only apologized, but they made amends with the person they alienated that really turned me off. We ended up having a great 45-minute Skype call. And they said, "Man, Brian, I do have that 'please everyone' mentality."

But I think there's also that idea that trust is like, I don't want to force you to trust me. I'm not going to tell you to trust me. But if you have an open perspective, if you're willing to learn from me or just listen to who I am and what I talk about, I believe you will trust over time.

I think when people say trust is a long-term game, that's true. But I think there's also an element where it's a long-term game with someone who is going into it wanting to trust you. For those of us who approach relationships very trusting to begin with, trust can be an immediate game if you've created your network and community to enable that. That's what I'm trying to embody now, and I'm testing it.

As a full-time speaker now, that's my full-time revenue. It's a business development game. Nobody really hires you back-to-back years. So everything is about building trust. My speaker agent says, "Brian, you've been running this speaking business for four years without a CRM, without all these backend systems, as a team of one." And I say, "Yeah, I work hard on establishing trust today so that they might hire me a year from now." That's how I've always done it.

I started sharing articles for events I wanted to speak at two years from now. I started sharing them today. So when the event comes around, they ask me six months out and say, "Brian, you've been in our network sharing our stuff. I've gotten to know you. Would you like to speak at our event?" And I think, "Matter of fact, I would." Little do they know that was my strategy two years earlier.

Ryan Hanley: It's almost like trust has a compounding effect. As you build trust with one community and become seen as a trustworthy person, more people are brought into that. Maybe they're willing to trust what you have to say and who you are quicker than they would if they hadn't heard from you. It just compounds over time.

I think that's where I always look at the difference between a community and a network. A community is people coming together because of a shared purpose and a shared passion. They're not connected via one individual. A network is the idea that you are invited in because of the people you know. If a couple of people are removed from that network, your attachment might no longer be there because the person is removed. But you can remove people from a community and the community powers on because they're joined by that purpose and passion.

That's why the words "monetizing community" don't go together. It's like, wait a second, we're bringing people together. In the online space, you can build followings on social networks. We all know how that works. But building a community that will follow you wherever you go is where the magic happens. There's no recipe, no online course, no one-hit wonder to make that happen.

You can use the extremes. Using Gary Vee is like using Apple and technology. There's only one of him, and he did it his own way. But there are lots of people understanding this idea of building through trust and relationships, putting their passions out there. Ultimately, that community ends up telling the story for them. Sometimes people call them a podcaster or a YouTuber, but if you look at the fundamental core, it didn't matter the medium. It was more about the message they were delivering. The medium was just the vehicle to get it to the people.

One of the things you said was that retweets and sharing other people's content has become rare. I was an active blogger and content creator in 2008, 2009. That was the currency of the internet. That was how anyone found anything. I know you, I know the stuff you like, you retweet someone else's stuff, and now I get introduced to somebody new. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't link to other people's work in their articles. They aren't retweeting other people's work. They aren't sharing articles from other people into their feeds. Even stealing people's quotes and not putting their names under the quote drives me nuts.

Brian Fanzo: What you just said drives me nuts. A quote from someone alive with a Twitter account on Twitter, and then not at-mentioning them on Twitter. It drives me crazy. And the worst part is, it does you more benefit to mention them.

I think this goes back to a whole other piece. We lived in a mentality where you hold on to what you know. If you get hit by a bus, everyone else is screwed. You are defined by what you know, and you are rewarded by the salary you have. We no longer live in that culture, but there are still little pieces that trickle in.

When I see people steal quotes that the majority of us know are from someone else, and they don't even put that person's name underneath, I think, "Wow, it's this idea that if I put their name underneath, it somehow devalues what I own." Actually, no. It now connects us with someone else we can be inspired by. If that person ends up being someone we trust, we have upped your level of trust. It's so weird that we got away from that.

I think a lot of people are still looking for that shortcut. In the early blogging days, the early social media days, even Twitter five years ago, the shortcut wasn't the answer. There was no shortcut to success. Then came this idea of growth hacking and all these weird things where you were rewarded for vanity metrics. People started trying to make excuses for these bad behaviors.

My dad gave me so much amazing business advice. For a long time, I thought, "Dad, that's great, but I work in digital and you hate the internet and you don't like email. You sold peanuts." He owned a global peanut brittle company. Now when I circle back, I realize everything my dad told me about business, sales, trust, your word, and over-delivering—everything he ingrained in me that I shunned—is the core values of what still works. Unfortunately, some people still see an easy button and look for that shortcut.

For me, I've never looked at anything I do today as a need or desire for short-term, immediate success. Immediate success almost scares me because what happens when it goes away? You fall. Building this long journey and path we're building, failure does not scare me because I won't settle for it. I have plenty of things to fall back on in my life and my journey.

But there are a lot of other people who think, "Oh my goodness, I could get that million dollars tomorrow, or I could go viral, or I could be interviewed on this show." I've never had that desire. If it's a show I want to be on, I'm going to earn my keep. If I get on it five years from now, that is so much more powerful than going around some back door to get something I want immediately.

The good news is, I feel like people are getting exposed to this unique value at a much higher rate now. We've finally hit this pivot point where taking shortcuts, selling unicorns and rainbows without actually having the products or services promised—yes, they're still winning right now, but they're starting to get exposed slowly. The people who are 10 years behind us are thinking, "Wait a second, I might not want to follow those people." Even the Me Too movement showed us that "this is just the way things were done" is no longer acceptable. We're at this pivot that is changing our society, and let's hope it changes sooner than later.

Ryan Hanley: For me, trust isn't a zero-sum game. Trust is me showing, putting you on a pedestal, or having you on my podcast. It doesn't decrease my trust and increase your trust. The whole pool gets bigger. I honestly believe that many people intrinsically do not understand that idea—that your win is their loss. It's that scarcity mindset. Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain. Everyone has their own way of describing it. But it's such a toxic mentality because it does get you chasing the short term.

That isn't to say that everyone doesn't have moments of it. It's not like I don't look at my Instagram stats and go, "What the hell?" I mean, obviously, you have these moments. But it's being able to come back to the idea that there's a group in the insurance industry whose whole slogan is "Better Together." They've been saying that for years. To be honest, when I first saw it, I was jealous because I thought, "That is 100% the perfect way to describe what I believe is exactly how we have to operate."

It takes me back to something you said. You said the internet is a great place to find your people. I agree with that at face value, but I actually think that what I hope—and you alluded to this in the next wave of the internet—is that it's not about finding your people. It's about understanding that everyone has a piece of you in them.

I got a piece of advice from somebody because I don't comment on politics, but I do keep an eye on what is happening. I try not to participate in the negativity because it's tough to get away from. I had someone say to me, "It might do you some good to follow people who, at face value, you don't know if you agree with them or not." At face value, you may say, "I don't want to follow that person. I don't agree with that." But this person's advice was that if you do that over time, if you actually give them a chance, there's always probably going to be some things you don't align with, but there may actually be some things you do align with.

If our mentality could shift from "If you disagree with me on one thing, you're against me" to "If you agree with me on one thing, we have a chance," that shift is really what I hope happens. As we roll up on this next election, holding some of those ideas in our heads is going to be more important than ever.

Brian Fanzo: That embodies what my life's work is about. I use the phrase "digital empathy." Removing toxic people, negativity, and hateful people from your life is important. That does not mean you remove the people who disagree with you.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 31 years old, later in my life. The first time I shared that on Spade, I remember the day. I remember a lady came up to me bawling, and she had me FaceTime her son. Her son was struggling with an illness—it wasn't even ADHD. It was just the fact that I put it out there in front of thousands of people that connected me. It made me realize that our vulnerabilities not only become our superpowers, but they are the things that link us. As humans, we are so much more aligned than we think.

I love the way you're saying it. It's like, "Hey, I disagree with you, you're out of my life," rather than saying, "Well, we agree on this." I tweeted about this idea of compartmentalization this weekend, and it got a lot of play. If you can compartmentalize certain things, prioritize or deprioritize how you evaluate them, it allows us to open up new doors to things we may have always just siloed off.

At the same time, I also believe in having a backbone and your own morals and ethics. I have a few things that are just at my core. When I got suspended from school my freshman or sophomore year, my mom was so mad at me. She said, "You're finally turning things around." I told her, "Mom, I have three things. If these three things happen, I don't have rage. I'm not a person that wants to fight. But I have three things at my core that I don't settle for. I will not back down. I will not stay quiet."

Those three things still exist today. Anyone that attacks my family triggers a defense mechanism. Anyone that bullies from a place of power has always been a thing for me. And anyone that hits a woman. Those were my three. At their core, they've expanded to a higher level now. I do a lot of work in the LGBTQ community, and I have a lot of passion for treating everyone equally as long as that person isn't harming other people. I don't care what their love or beliefs are. That's at my core.

But I also grew up right-wing Catholic. I had to learn how to bring this along. Trying to get my dad to come on board with some of these thoughts and beliefs I had in high school was a lose-lose battle. I would bump heads with him and realize we'd get nowhere. But over the years, I realized that by introducing him to my friends, he would get to know these people. Slowly, he realized that some of his beliefs about these people were based on things he just wasn't exposed to. It's been amazing to see my dad come full circle.

It goes back to this idea of compartmentalization. You don't have to agree with the other things if they're not part of your moral compass and they're not set in stone. You can say, "Hey, I'm going to let that person have that, but I'm going to agree with them on this side." It's that weird alignment of a brand, mission, and message.

I think it's important to always reevaluate that. Marcus shared with me—we had three and a half hours together at the airport two weeks ago. We joked that we talked 500 words a minute. At one point, we looked around and the entire restaurant in the airport bar couldn't hear because we were just loud and fiery. But we spent those three hours together, and the majority of it was our passion and worry about society a year from now, at the next election. It had zero to do with politics. I don't think either one of us brought up Republican or Democrat. It was more about the divisiveness and the toxic elements. As business partners and leaders who have been aligned for years, we are all of a sudden going to be forced to pick a side. We talked about what that's going to do to startups and businesses. We were both scared and passionate to figure out ways to not allow that to happen in the arenas we live in.

To your point about that one thing that bonds us, this is probably part of my whole empathy thing. My slogan is "Empathy starts with me," but I mean it backwards. What I believe is that we can't make the world a more empathetic place until we start putting our story out there so that people can be empathetic towards us. Part of that is realizing there are people, cultures, and beliefs that were not open to me. So I started sharing some of these other things, and all of a sudden, I was connecting at these core values. I would have never thought of myself as someone that would be connected with a Buddhist monk, someone truly in this spiritual moment where their entire life is that. Yet we connected on something else that we both agreed on. All of a sudden, he opened my doors and my life.

This is Jared. He has a great podcast, "Noetic Nomad"—I believe that's the name. It's all about theory. We connected on our love for podcasting and sharing our stories as intimately as you could ever share, thanks to a couple of adult drinks. All of a sudden, these worlds opened up to us. We realized we both grew up in completely different worlds, but we have these same beliefs.

That's why when I say on stage every time, "I believe we're living in the greatest time in history," it's hard to say when you have mass shootings. We're recording this on September 11th, 18 years ago. But I truly do believe unity is the byproduct of where we're at. We just have to get to that pivot point. Hopefully, we get to it without something that destroys us so much that it takes too long to rebuild.

Ryan Hanley: I have a lot of thoughts on what you just said. I completely agree that we are living in the greatest time in history. We're also living in the most equal time in history. We're living in the safest time in history. We're living in the best time in history. That being said, it's far from perfect.

I would rather frame the people who would stand and say, "This country is a lot of negative things." I firmly disagree with that vantage point. I understand their frustration and wish it could be framed in a more positive way. The problem is the media doesn't write stories about positivity. So unless you're blasting the president or blasting someone else, or someone on his side blasting back, no one picks it up.

What I think is important to remember from my perspective is that a lot of misconceptions are formed based on signaling. When we're trying to signal the tribe that we would like to be part of, or that we feel gains us the most points, that creates a lot of misconceptions about who we actually are. Anyone listening to this who cares, we need to be very careful about how we signal in the world and why we're doing that. There's a difference between having a belief structure and feeling the need to signal that structure into the world for a given reason.

Brian Fanzo: That signal oftentimes we either don't realize we're doing it, or we don't have a desire to do it yet, but we feel based on cultural norms that we have to. The easiest way to link this into the business world is that I've been very blessed. I get to interview a lot of CMOs and CEOs of really big companies. And I'm also the guy that wears a backwards hat, crazy shoes, and doesn't wear a suit and tie.

People say to me, "Brian, I'm starting to figure out how this works for you. You treat everyone with the same amount of respect and trust, whether they have a title or they don't have a title." The people who have the title, when they see that, they respect it at a deeper level than if I were signaling, "Oh, I'm just as equal as you," trying to prove that I belong to have a conversation of meaning or to be a part of their business or life.

I connect people—high-ranking executives—and the biggest piece of it was, "Well, Brian, you hung out and talked to me as if I was a normal person. I built trust with you the same way you would have built it with an entry-level person." You don't have to signal or become something you're not, or even feel the need to be something that someone values. There are plenty of people in the world who value title and that stuff, but those aren't the people I'm playing the game with. If they are, I quickly move on.

This is probably one of the other fundamental principles for me. I call myself a "change evangelist." It was a title one of my CEOs gave me. He was one of the smartest guys I've ever worked for. I pitched him the job title "technology evangelist," and he gave it to me. We put it on business cards, but he hated it. He said, "You're not a technology evangelist. People assume you want technology in all these places. You remove technology just as much as you install it. You identify a problem and look at it and say, 'Does technology make it better or worse?' If it makes it worse, you have no problem removing technology from the equation." He was right.

That element of "change evangelist" is something I think we also make a mistake on. I'm guilty of this many times in my career. You can't change the game unless you're playing in the game. Oftentimes we think, "Wow, they're not going to agree with us, or they're wrong." I hate putting generalizations out there, but the millennial generation—for all the stereotypes—one of the biggest is, "Well, they don't understand us. They don't live in our world. Screw them, I'm not going to play in their game." That's how we quickly become two worlds working in two different arenas with no one crossing over.

Funneling into that compartmentalization thing, there are plenty of conversation groups I'm a part of right now knowing that me being there might just change one person or one narrative. But if I'm not showing up, there is the opportunity to change nothing. Changing nothing in things I'm passionate about scares me more than anything else.

Ryan Hanley: One of the most popular tweets I've had this entire year was a simple tweet that said, "If your social media feed sucks, it's not social media's fault, it's the people you're following. Embrace the unfollow, the block, the mute button." A lot of people took it and ran with it. They loved it. Then there were a lot of people who pushed back, and I had to put out a second tweet. I said, "Hold on a second. This does not mean you remove people that disagree with you. It does not mean people that have a different opinion." I actually believe that to be empathetic, to be well-rounded, you must understand all vantage points.

Ryan Hanley: I think that's exactly it. We look at politics, and that's the problem on both extremes. Neither extreme is willing to stop and understand where the other extreme is coming from. Therefore, they just keep making it more divisive.

But for me, that's where it comes back to. I said, "No, you remove toxic people that are attacking, saying hateful things, full of negativity." But by getting rid of them, now you have space for people that will open your mind to new possibilities. You'll have all these new things.

And I think that's where not being part of the game comes in. Saying, "Oh my god, I hate social media," or blaming social media for the Me Too movement or all these things that exist. No, wait a second. Society and mankind have been bad for a long time. Social media has exposed it. We can either blame social media and continue to live in a society that allows these things to happen, or we can fix society and amplify the good with social media.

This goes back to you and I, our core beliefs. There is this element that together we can rise the tide. But in this world we're living in, it's still unfortunately too rare in the space we're at. I believe the businesses that are doing it well are the ones that see that.

Brian Fanzo: Yeah. I actually think this is a good topic for us to close on because I want to be respectful of your time. I actually think that the negativity is the minority. When we see the hardcore negativity, what we're hearing is a very small portion of the population on both sides, whose identity is that negativity. That's just the role they play.

What I hope we hold in our minds, in all things, when you're having disagreements at work, disagreements with your family, friends, or in your community, is that the loudest, most negative voices in a conversation are often the vast minority. Not that we shouldn't hear them, but we certainly shouldn't hold them up as the banner for what that side of the argument actually believes.

I know a lot of pro-gun people who are also pro-gender rights. If either one of the far extremes heard that you were one or the other, they both would kick you out. Then where do you go? That goes for every disagreement. You may be pro-hierarchy at work, but also want your people to step up and question what you do.

I think the easiest example is always in politics for this particular issue, but the idea transcends every aspect of our life. When you're disagreeing with your spouse, your partner, your family, your friends. I think this is coming more and more into work as people get into these discussions.

I just had a discussion the other day with someone about flat structure versus hierarchies. I firmly believe in a hierarchy. I just do. I believe you have to have a hierarchy to get things done. That being said, it places more intrinsic responsibility on the leader to allow their people to be value adds all the way up the chain. With a weak or selfish, self-oriented leader, that system falls apart, which is why people say hierarchies are the problem. Hierarchies aren't the problem. Shitty leadership is the problem.

So we went back and forth. Ultimately, I think we both understood each other's sides. The person I was talking to said, "How do you know if someone's a shitty leader? Once they get to that position, how do you get them out?" I said, "That's a fair point. That's what we have to work through."

My point is, I don't ever think we should shut anybody up. I don't believe in banning people. Unless they say really hateful things. But I think we need to hear what the extremes are saying. We just always have to hold in our mind exactly who they are and why they're doing it. It's like you signaling as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and me as a Bills fan. It's part of who they are to be hard to one side and negative. Everybody else is in the middle, and those are the people I hope find one thing in common. Because when you find one thing in common, everything else seems to fall into place.

Ryan Hanley: You'd be amazed too if you looked at negativity in your life, in your feed, in our world today. The negativity is rooted in a desire to know that their voice is heard, not that the message is apparent. This goes from kneeling on the football field to everything else.

There's a fundamental principle here. There's a difference between knowing that I'm heard and knowing that you have to listen to me. Those are two different worlds. We have this weird thing where if we acknowledge someone, if we say, "Hey, we hear you," that means we ultimately have to do exactly what they're telling us. I think that's completely false.

The amount of times I've had these conversations with leaders on social media, they come to me and Brian, putting vulnerabilities out there, doing all this stuff. Then they ask, "How do you respond to this comment or this statement?" I say, "You have to acknowledge it." They say, "What?" I say, "Because the lack of acknowledgement will now just spur the hate and the anger more."

This idea of, "Hey, I hear you. I'm going to take it for the value that it has, but I'm going to decide how it's going to be implemented. But I do hear you." It's amazing, even to your point with the friend you had a discussion on hierarchy. People say, "If you weren't willing to listen, you're an idiot." Then the root comes out to be, "Oh yes, we realize that shitty leaders have been rewarded for a long time, and it's really hard to get rid of shitty leaders. How do we prevent shitty leaders? There's not really a recipe."

This excites me about where we're at. Find that one commonality. But at the same time, if you don't see the commonality and they won't stop chirping, maybe it's time to take a different perspective on who they are and what they're talking about.

Some of the coolest moments in my life have to do with a group of speakers that opened me to this world of people doing the same profession as me, just doing it differently. They have different passions and goals, and they've come from so many different lives than I have. Then there are these core things that connect us.

In the last two years, I've become a much more well-rounded human. I don't judge everything. I look at every opportunity as a learning opportunity. I'm willing to listen. Oftentimes people look at me like, "Brian, why did you keep listening there?" I say, "Because they have that passion rooted somewhere. Even if I don't agree with it, if I understand it better by listening, I improve. Maybe I can help them improve, even tell their story."

I think that's where you and I agreed. Part of the route where you and I connected early on was our desire to help people, but also a desire to realize that everything's building to a performance level that we can always grow on. You made the statement before, and I just ordered these shirts yesterday. I have a shirt coming out that just says, "We Are Greater Than Me." Betterment time. Because if we can embrace that and realize that we're all connected by those one things, the world's going to be a much better place.

My man, it is always a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you so much. I know you're traveling. Life is hectic. You're an in-demand speaker and you got places to be. I appreciate this time. It has definitely been fun for me. You got my mind going and I got a page full of notes, which is always amazing.

Where is the best place for people listening to this? They want to learn more about you. Maybe they want to hire you to speak. They just want to be part of your ecosystem. Where do they go to learn more?

Brian Fanzo: I'm a big believer in consistency. Consistency is extremely important. Probably one of the most underrated things online today. So I'm iSocialFanz. That's I-S-O-C-I-A-L-F-A-N-Z, with a Z at the end, on every social network. I always say, don't follow me everywhere. I create a lot of content, a lot of noise. Follow me on your favorite channel. I would appreciate that.

My new speaker site is brianfanzo.com. That's where all of my speaking stuff goes through. And if you want a podcast that relates to your audience the most, I have a weekly podcast called FOMO Fans, where I try to cure your fear of missing out around entrepreneurship, marketing, business, technology. It's a solo podcast. Literally, it's me pocketing the microphone for 30 minutes. It's my passion project where I just love being able to share what's on my mind. I rolled out episode 118 this week, so it's a lot of fun.

But yeah, anywhere and everywhere. Ryan, it's a pleasure for me. I love that we can come from two different industries and walks of life. Social media was the link. We ended up having some mutual friends that united the trust we have together. I've been cheering for you as you were pivoting, and I think we've both been cheering for each other, which is a whole lot more fun than the conversation. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, brother. Cheers.

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