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In this episode, I had the chance to speak with the ever so charismatic Dan Pacheco about his book The Spirit Animals of Marketing, his experience with ultra endurance running, and his valuable insights into the world of feral marketing. Below are the links promised in the podcast, and thanks for watching!

Feel free to watch the podcast in video form or read through the transcript. Enjoy!

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Justin: Thanks for tuning in, I’m Justin Collier. Today on the show we have a very special and very funny guest, Dan Pacheco. We talked a little bit about his book, The Spirit Animals of Marketing, we talk about how to communicate a little bit more empathetically with the audience and Dan actually even shares a few really interesting stories about his experience with Ultra Endurance Athleticism and Ultra Endurance Races. Really hop you enjoy the Podcast today and enjoy.

Justin: Let’s start with an introduction.

Dan: Okay.

Justin: An introduction to Dan Pacheco for those who don’t know Dan Pacheco.

Dan: Fantastic.

Justin: I wrote down a couple little bullets here, I’m going to read them, you can’t read this, this is a, don’t even peek at it.

Dan: I won’t even peek. I’m just going to look awkwardly into the ceiling.

Justin: Okay. Dan Pacheco is part wolf, Dan Pacheco is the author of the book The Spirit Animals of Marketing, Dan Pacheco is Director of Sales for ERA GRIZARD.


Justin: GRIZARD.

Dan: Yes it’s a common mistake.

Justin: You know I’ve only read it, I actually haven’t heard it.

Dan: It’s fine, but now you have, it’s, you hear that R in it. Exactly there’s a lot of power in it.

Justin: Do you capitalize all GRIZARD the same way you capitalize the ERA?

Dan: Yeah.

Justin: I think you must.

Dan: I like to.

Justin: Yeah. Dan is also an Ultra Endurance Athlete, which I would like to talk about a little bit while I’ve got you here.

Dan: Absolutely.

Justin: Dan’s also a really good friend, we’ve known each other since high school? Middle school?

Dan: It was, high school.

Justin: Yeah.

Dan: Early high school, wow.

Justin: We’ve got some interesting overlaps I think in our history.

Dan: I would consider them to be cosmic overlaps. Like seriously there’s a way that the universe just keeps putting us together. We’re kind of like a shoelace, like a microcosim of, you know, of course a shoe, the shoelace. You come together, right for a brief little stint and then you go way back out, right and circle back around and loop right back in.

Justin: I think it’s important to separate always so that you can venture into the unknown and return back to each other and tell the other person what you’ve learned.

Dan: Precisely.

Justin: Exactly.

Justin: I want to start with the wolf thing. I think most people probably want to start with the wolf thing.

Dan: Sure.

Justin: Can we start with the wolf thing?

Dan: We absolutely can.

Justin: Is that comfortable?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin: Dan you really identify with wolf, you really kind of lead with that, like people see the association. I think some people may not entirely understand, but maybe want to understand where it comes from. I’ve heard people in the past say things like I identify with some specific type of animal and I think you probably have a deep understanding or a deeper meaning about the reasons why you identify with it than other people. So let me start with this, when I think of a wolf, I think of a number of different connotations.

Dan: That’s really the most interesting part, so go ahead. I’m going to love this right now.

Justin: Okay, cool. So I think wolf, wolf is sort of a pathfinder. In cultures, it’s associated with being a pathfinder, it’s associated with being like an educator, they’re pro-social animal, they work in packs but they’re also cooperative as well too.

Dan: Correct.

Justin: They’ve got a dominance hierarchy of themselves, there’s a lot of connotations that go around the wolf and I’m curious, which of those do you identify with? All of them? Which ones, maybe just start with that.

Dan: Absolutely. So, one context or connotation that was not addressed but I feel like is very popular, I mean just look at literature, folklore, the wolf is often represented as an evil, conniving creature character.

Justin: Ah, Dan, that makes sense now.

Dan: Exactly, yeah, ah, ha, ha, but that’s the antithesis of it and truly there’s not really, you said it, I’m impressed. I’m glad that you lead with those attributes because that’s exactly what I’ve identified with personally, part of my brand and also with the business development and marketing strategies that I work with people on. So yeah, so started way back when, Ultra Endurance Running you mentioned earlier. I was running in Colorado, okay, used to live there, go back every summer and that’s a great place to of course, run.

Dan: So out there on a trail run and I actually encounter a singular wolf. Now thankfully with a singular wolf, and it could’ve gone either one of two ways, the more that I’ve learned about them since then. When you see a singular wolf, it’s either because they are, they’ve been exorcized from the pack, they’re meek, they’re more timid or they’re hyper-aggressive. So thankfully this one was on the timid side, but at that time I had no understanding of a wolf other than really these are vicious, you know blood snarling creatures.

Dan: So I’m the type of person, I think you would be the same to, when something, you get shaken by something, you find fear in something it’s more often than not because you don’t know enough about it. And same thing with my wife and I, she terrified me when I first met her, but then here she is, here we are kind of thing. Exactly, exactly, but anyway with this wolf, the more that I understood about the hierarchy, the structure and actually how they impact the ecosystem around them. If you ever have a chance to look into how wolves basically saved Yellowstone. It’s a really remarkable story of how they literally revamped and super charged the ecosystem there when it was actually weaning out over population of other animals and that had an effect on the grasslands, the rivers, everything crazy. But anyway, so yeah. That’s when I discovered that and like there’s so much structure, there’s so much loyalty and belief in the pack and the singular individual, it was such an phenominal microcosmic and fable story metaphor to who I really have identified with and the life that I led up to that point.

Justin: Yeah. Is there any part of it, when I think of wolves I really do think of this idea of cooperation. I think we’ve all watched some amazing David Attenborough, Planet Earth type chase where a wolf pack is just, is just exhibiting some level of intelligence that it’s hard to attribute to animals, because sometimes I forget that. I wanted to understand how you thought about wolves from the cooperation standpoint, because your story seems, … seems that the effects got laid on you because you had this one wolf that you ran into. You mentioned a wolf could be separated from its pack and typically for a couple of reasons, one being the wolf is, you mentioned too aggressive, another the way I understand it is, wolf packs are typically like an Alpha male, Alpha female, they’ve got their young who are getting older and as they get to a certain age they might leave the pack and venture out on their own.

Dan: Right.

Justin: How much do you think about wolves in terms of pack cooperation? I think of wolves as being sort of loyal to their own group in certain ways. Maybe you just go there?

Dan: Of course, yeah. So, maybe it’s jumping the gun here but speaking of cooperation within the pack, it’s such a beautiful example in how they hunt which was the first chapter, is the first chapter in Spirit Animals of Marketing, when you’re associating different methodologies in the way of the world, the natural world around us. The wolf is the first one and it sets up total cooperation of multiple impressions. So for instance as a true strategy for a lot of wolf packs in the wild. So let’s imagine that we are on top of a prairie, or on top of a cliff overlooking a prairie. Down in the valley you see 10,000 bison and next to us there’s a pack of about a dozen wolves.

Dan: Now they know if they were to just randomly blitz that herd, they would be trampled because those bison or buffalo outweighed them 50 to one kind of thing. Not to mention there’s so much more, it’s chaos and you get trampled and die.

Dan: So they know that they have to present strategy and total cooperation. So what they’ll do is, 10 of the wolves will go about a quarter mile down to a predestined point and then the remaining two are called slashers. They slowly sneak up to that herd and then they attack.

Dan: Now, they’re not looking to make any vital approach. They’re not trying to take any singular bison down at that point but they just go and they claw, they bite the neck, the thigh, whatever it is in a very vulnerable spot and they back off. Then those bison are still reacting, but they’re on the trail of those that are bleeding out now.

Dan: So through a series of maybe five or six impressions or attacks, then they keep on pushing those two or three bison directly towards those other 10. So it’s strategy, total cooperation, and once those bison, those buffalo whatever it is, have bled out and they’ve succumbed to the multiple impressions of the wolves, that whole wolf pack, there they are with licking fangs, ready to make the final impression if you will.

Justin: This analogy, maybe bleeding out is finding that our product or our service is something that’s valuable now.

Dan: It’s just making a very powerful impression and at that point through a series of engagements you’ve led your demographics who, you know the agenda that you’ve set out, but of course in this case the agenda is only singular serving right, for the wolves, but in the marketing sales world, that’s, instead of the snarling fangs, you know, clicking the throats or the thighs of those poor bison, it’s more so encouragement. That’s what replaced so it’s the total opposite end of it, polar opposites there but it’s encouragement and that’s something we can get into later about kind of the structure of what I believe to be a very powerful and effective profitable form of communication, plant a little seed there.

Justin: Okay, totally. I’ve heard the term feral marketing before, I like that term a lot, is what you just described feral marketing or is that maybe just a piece of it?

Dan: It’s a strategy. So I mean that, the wolf approach to marketing, that can be done in multiple ways going back to your classic mundane direct mail, it can be, digital, whatever it is. So it’s, feral marketing really comes into play when it’s the person that is showing up in unexpected ways.

Dan: Somewhat similar to guerilla marketing or tactics but it’s a lot more complex, comprehensive, long lasting, and I believe more profitable at the end.

Justin: I would love to map some of these two examples. So you mentioned direct mail, … maybe give me an example of one way in which you’ve seen feral marketing being used out in the wild.

Dan: Alright. So, let’s see, shareable experiences I feel like are a tremendous bit of feral marketing. Now those are kind of on the fringe of it, but this day and age everyone’s looking for content to have best Instagram page, right? We want to share, tell people that we’re out there having fun and doing cool shit.

Dan: So we’ll use Starbucks for example, right, or anyone of those places you know in New York, the croinut, whatever it was when that first came in to be. People would wait in lines, literally around city blocks for hours. They would deal with shitty service because those poor baristas, or whoever’s behind the counter is sick of making whatever it is they’re making, right? And they will pay premium price for it and forgive a poor product. If it tastes bad, smells funny, whatever it is because singularly it looks awesome on their Instagram page.

Justin: Absolutely.

Dan: So when you do that you’re not really spending any money. I mean a few ads, digital ads to promote that there’s a Unicorn Frappuccino, you know now available and everyone now is sharing that hashtag and yet going crazy with it. That’s the understanding, kind of the basis of feral marketing is one provoking and assembling the pack in a sense and allowing them to do the work for you. That kind of opens up the influencer marketing, but to go back to feral marketing tactics, when I owned, well Endurance Running Company, it was my old training company, we were called the WereZoo.

Dan: The idea was to evolve, kind of like a werewolf but we didn’t, I didn’t want to pigeon-hole anybody into being a wolf, if they wanted to be you know, a bison or a gazelle or shark, whatever. You’d be the ware version of whatever your spirit animal is, you know what I mean?

Justin: Absolutely.

Dan: So the idea behind that is, is totally out there and I didn’t have the money at the time to get a brick and mortar spot. I had equipment, I had accreditations and certifications but I didn’t have the money for a classic training facility. So I didn’t say hey listen I’m a grassroots operation here, heres a flier I hope you join, we owned it. I was like listen, you weren’t running, you’re not going to run a race in the gym, right, you are, humankind, survival is not done in air conditioning. So where you’ve, where we’ve come from is where we’re going to practice. Where your goal, where your finish line is going to be, that’s where we’re going to practice. So that’s all outdoors, right?

Justin: I really like that, yeah.

Dan: But I owned it. Of course through communication and events and training and free group runs, all that stuff was, I wouldn’t consider that to be feral marketing because it’s pretty done, right, we understand those patterns. So feral marketing in that sense is, I went out with some stencils and some spray chalk and these stencils would transform, they would start out as, and I want to tell you a very popular running trail, okay.

Dan: So the stencils would start out as running shoes and then footprint after footprint they would start to slowly evolve into claws and eventually it was wolf paws that ran off of the trail. Now this is back when QR codes were really a thing so at the end of it, or the end of the footprint trail I had my logo on a stake, just in the grass, in the bushes, with a QR code, and that QR code took you to my webpage.

Dan: That got us so much traffic, it created such an emotional connection and experience and story. At that point I stopped having to really do any ads. I didn’t run ads at that point because now the pack was assembling. We created our logo on our shirts and every time that we’d be out there on the running trails among all the other running stores that have their pace groups, they’re doing it in a very calculated way, our Wild Winds, people that we’re in the group would let out howls, right?

Dan: When I was coming up I would howl to my people and you’d hear a big howl throughout the trail. It was so cool, when that got to a point where those people in those other domesticated running groups would recognize every Saturday or Sunday morning and they’d howl back and those people would join us.

Dan: So it was a whole thing, that was really the basis of feral marketing.

Justin: Yeah, really beautiful community building. I really do love that idea as far as the human footprint changing into a wolf.

Dan: Cost me six bucks.

Justin: It’s probably even intimidating to other people how lateral of a thought that is, how creative of an idea that is.

Dan: Of course and this is one of the principles that I, you know when I work with, focus more so on realistic development, branding, coaching, for the agents, that’s one thing I really try to work with hem on is this, something happens to us Justin when we’re in our commute. So we’re wearing our comfy pants, you know, elastic band or drawstring, whatever you prefer, I don’t know, when you’re at home but then you put on your fancy pants, your business pants and all of sudden you flip the idea of what is acceptable and how to market or prospect solicit business.

Dan: Think about this, are you excited? Are you thinking about this throughout the day when you get home or are you excited to go into your inbox and just open and read every single email you receive? Junk folder, spam folder, do you open every single email?

Justin: Obviously no.

Dan: Obviously no. Okay, are you answering every single call from unknown numbers?

Justin: Zero calls from unknown numbers.

Dan: Zero calls, ha, okay, so perfect. So when you’re wearing your comfy pants, I’m not answering my phone and I’m selective with what I open in my inbox, however something reckless happens when we put our khaki pants on and go to work. Then cold calls, cold emails, that’s where the magics at, this is what you have to do to have to be where you have to approach.

Dan: People get so wound up in the thought, the template that is so dated on approaching the market in that way but again, when they go put their comfy pants on, they’re not picking up their phone and they’re not opening every email. That’s what just blows my mind is we spend so much money on these systems, on these scripts and on these trainings that tell you how to leverage a great cold call script.

Dan: But I don’t care what the script is, I’m not even answering, they don’t even have a chance to give me their million dollar script because I’m not answering it, you’re not answering it, hardly anybody’s answering it. So that’s one thing that I’ve worked on and that’s one thing again, you talked about earlier is how we get kind of wound up or critique or some times pet peeved. Or peeve at me, or people that practice this kind of feral marketing.

Dan: It’s because they get so tense and spend so much money on these systems because they think they have to approach in a certain way and when some maverick, jack ass, whatever they want to call that person, right, approaches it in a way that they spent little to no money but showed up in a much more impactful way, gosh isn’t that frustrating? For that person that’s still you know?

Justin: That’s operating on this old mode. It’s almost like when we have this delineation between our personal time and our work time, we have this different sensitive need to disruptive marketing. Not disruptive-

Dan: Well?

Justin: Yes disruptive is what I mean, … the type of marketing that it’s taking our intention away from, the thing that we’re actually interested in, it’s kind of why when we’re scrolling through our news feed we don’t really like seeing ads. Ads are actually becoming, I say this as a positive thing, as ads are becoming more empathetic, more story telling, more indistinguishable from just good, from good, I’ll use the word storytelling again.

Justin: In some ways it looks new and I think if you’re cynical about marketing in general and you want to look at marketing that way, you might be turned off, but I see it as a very, very positive thing. When I see something like the creative idea you had about the feet turning into wolf paws, going off the trail and you used it as a marketing effort, that’s a unique experience I think with value added to the user.

Justin: If you’re focused on creating those sorts of things, even when someone is in their comfy pants, they’re not going to be so reluctant to answer that phone call or respond to it, you know?

Dan: Exactly. I feel like this is appropriate to kind of bring this up now, you guided the conversation perfectly to this and it’s listen, I’m not someone that ever really appreciates or likes to live by you know the four A’s of success or whatever-

Justin: What are the four A’s of success?

Dan: Exactly. The four, or these mantras and we do this on a social level, we do this on a life, like mission statement level, we always look for words that rhyme or have great alliteration, but I feel like a lot of times those people that are writing those down are trying to force that alliteration, or these little word plays.

Dan: Like is defense really the best offense, or whatever the thing is? Like is it really? But it just sounds cool, right? Or like to walk through darkness is, you have to have light, all these like stupid, like yeah okay but what’s it really mean? But people believe it, they live in it, they like it, they engage with it.

Dan: With that said, I actually have kind of a little float and it has to be in this order of words or principles that will produce a very profitable and effective form of communication that all just happen to start with E. So that was not-

Justin: You’re not forcing any letters.

Dan: Exactly it’s just an organic thing.

Justin: Is it, are the four letters going to spell something.

Dan: No, no, no. It’s just Eeee maybe, so yeah they all start with E, okay?

Justin: Perfect.

Dan: So the first thing you have to have and this is where people always screw up, they try to do step two before step one. You have to have an emotional connection first. Just as you said when those runners, those people that would see those footprints and engage with it, they’re a lot more open to more engagement from me when they’re wearing their comfy pants because the emotional connection has been made.

Dan: There has to be a reason that somebody wants to connect, engage, and develop that relationship with you or your brand or your business, whatever it may be. But everybody, everybody tries to go for the education, you know how many awards is there from one, why they should know us kind of thing, how we’re going to help you do this, this, and this through this, this, and this system.

Dan: We go through LinkedIn, go through email and the first things you’re getting from these marketing agencies for those, I assume you get those too.

Justin: Certainly.

Dan: Yeah. They’re talking about stuff that I don’t care about, I don’t care at all.

Justin: You’re not even specifically talking about their credentials, you’re talking about?

Dan: I don’t care about credentials, I don’t care about getting educated, from the first time that I’m opening an email or engaging with them in any way, I don’t care about getting educated. What I care about is why should I know them or, yeah why should I know them, why should I know their business, their firm, whatever they do. Once that emotional connection’s established that’s when I will readily and happily read an entire email. That’s when I’ll watch a 30 minute video or Podcast or whatever it is, but if I don’t have that emotional connection first Justin, I’m not going to listen to 90 seconds or even read a short paragraph about what they’ve got going on.

Justin: Yeah, absolutely.

Dan: They’re coming on way too strong, too hot and heavy and it’s the whole little thing, write this down, remind me to go back to the E’s, so I don’t want to get too much off into a tangent here.

Justin: E, E, E, E, right?

Dan: Exactly, that’s what we started talking about here, but use this, like this little visualization here. If we’re at a party, so let’s say you and I walk into a room and we approach these people, right, men whatever, it doesn’t matter, but we just start talking about ourselves. We talk about how we can run a four minute mile and we have a great apartment and we have all these things, we’re like, blah, blah, blah blah, just all, all, all you and then you say well what, without really having them say anything back, like, hey what do you say we go out and get some drinks after this or let’s go on a weekend vacation together, what do you say?

Justin: You’re turned off, absolutely.

Dan: No way. Exactly they’re trying to get out of that situation. It’s the same thing but I don’t understand what happens with that shift. Once you’ve clocked in, you know metaphorically, what is that, what happens to your mind when you’re like, yeah I should just read, throughout my credentials and what my agendas all about onto these people without ever understanding what they have to go, it’s crazy.

Justin: There’s this, I think misconception about what it means to be interesting. In the same way that you sort of identify with the wolf, I, maybe it can be this lateral thing, I really have this love for the most interesting man in the world.

Justin: Look you may not be surprised, I think it even took me awhile to understand of why I found him interesting or even understand what interesting meant. A lot of people think that being interesting means leading with things like I run a four minute mile, hey I’ve got a nice apartment, me, me, me, me, me. Look at the way in which I’ve climbed my own social dominance hierarchy, whatever that is.

Justin: I think we’ve all maybe heard this tip, but maybe haven’t internalized enough of the tip is this, to be interesting, you have to be interested.

Dan: Precisely.

Justin: That conversation that you hypothetically, about where you talk about yourself initially, if the person would just flip that around and start with asking maybe these two questions, how do you feel about blank? And why are you the way you are? When you start doing these you start being interested in that person in a way that develops a really deep meaningful bond and if this is something that is potentially a business relationship, those questions are going to get you to the ways in which you can serve the other person.

Dan: Right, right. I love that because I feel like we’re building something here. So, I totally agree and I’m all in with that, let’s take it to the next level.

Dan: So we go, we ask those people, you know what, basically to get them talking about themselves and how that connection is made. The one thing we have to always remember though is, how we are entering, or when we are entering their emotional state.

Dan: So if we see somebody at the bar or at a table and they’ve just got their hair you know all tousled up and they’re just rubbing their face, you know all these physical signs, I’m just having a terrible time right now, if we go up anyway and just say, hey tell me about yourself, you know it’s, you’re going to get a middle finger. You know like listen, I don’t want to talk right now, right.

Dan: So you have to look at those cues and understand okay so, I have the right marketing concept, I’m not going to just throw up my credentials on them, I’m going to try to enter at an emotional plane first to have that connection to lead to everything else.

Dan: Then you have to look at the emotional state, so let’s use this right here. You’re starting to understand, I am so much about the story, metaphors and all these little tangents but the E’s don’t forget about the E’s.

Justin: The E’s are not going to be forgotten.

Dan: Good.

Justin: They’re at the top right now.

Dan: Good, good, good, good. Alright so the idea is, alright, lets go to, do you want to go to Mall at Millennia right now?

Justin: Let’s go, let’s transport.

Dan: The Mall at Millennia for those that aren’t familiar with the Central Florida area, it’s a pretty big mall, right and it’s an upper end mall and there’s how many parking spaces do you think are there Justin?

Justin: I think there are, I think there are 1200 parking spaces.

Dan: 1200 parking spaces okay, and that’s always full, right, I mean there is never a parking spot, okay and that’s always full. There’s never a parking spot. So it’s always 1200 parking spaces that are filled up. So let’s say that you and I and then Tanner over here all come up together with this great idea for a business right, and we know that we need to get the word out.

Dan: So, we make up 1200, probably 1500 flyers okay and we go and we work all day long. 1500 flyers, that’s the best and most amount of flyers we ever printed right? This is a ground breaking thing for us and we go and we flyer every single car in that parking lot. We have worked all day doing this, we are sweaty, our fingers are calloused, they’re black from all the dust on the windshield wipers.

Dan: We’ve worked hard and we’ve made impressions on over 1500 people, but when you’ve been in that position Justin, when you come in from, you know coming back to your car, and it’s raining or you’re just hot and you’ve got your arms full and you get everything settled and then you finally get ready to go and you see something flyer-ed onto your windshield wipers.

Dan: You get out of your car pissed off, you don’t even look at, you automatically assume that it’s a low budget window tinter and you toss it to the ground never to be seen again.

Justin: You truly don’t even want to look at it because it’s giving them credit for the way in which they disrupted you.

Dan: Exactly. So they are entering, no matter who they are, what they are or what they do, you’re assuming that they’re bottom of the barrel and they’ve already pissed you off in that first impression. Even if you happened to glance at the logo of whatever company it is. So they’ve entered your life in a negative way. Now we worked really hard. We spent money, time, energy.

Justin: Why haven’t they given us more of their attention, right?

Dan: That’s where the confusion happens. That’s where the confusion happens because people don’t spend enough time looking at the emotional state at which they enter their demographics lives.

Justin: Yeah. I think, what about this, … we have a few different levels of how aware someone is to a pain point. If I’m, … if I’m going to Google and I’m typing something like, by tennis shoes, I’m pretty far along in the process of knowing what shoes I’m ultimately going to buy. If I’m going to Google and I’m just typing tennis shoes without the word buy, the qualifying word, B-U-Y, buy tennis shoes, I may be just doing a research. One step before that I might type in something like my feet hurt. So at that point I may be only aware of the pain I’m having but not realizing that there is a solution called tennis shoes, you see what I’m saying?

Dan: Yes.

Justin: So these are a few layers here and a lot of times we have disruptive marketing like putting a flier on someone’s windshield when they may be focused on some other problem and they’re not even aware of the … of the pain point that they’re trying to solve, that you’re trying to solve even if they have that pain point.

Justin: Let me say that in a slightly different way. Have you heard the term, inbound marketing?

Dan: Yeah.

Justin: In your own words what do you think about the term inbound marketing?

Dan: What do I think about it?

Justin: Or how would you define it maybe for our audience who haven’t heard the term before?

Dan: Inbound marketing, well this is, in my mind, is when you’ve, you have more, well inbound communication coming in than anything else, right? It’s not so much an aggressive outbound reach. You’re not making the cold calls as much, it’s you’re a recognized, brand possibly or provider, right, and people are seeking you out in a sense. That’s how I kind of-

Justin: That very much is and where I’m leading this conversation is I feel like my experience, and maybe even just my expertise goes with the threshold of inbound marketing, but I think beyond that you, … you have insights that I don’t have regarding, … if someone is aware of some pain points, inbound marketing is a lot like having the resources, education, web pages, etcetera, that answer that question. Leading from, hey that’s your pain point, that’s probably because of this reason. To solve that pain point here are these solutions, we happen to offer one of those solutions, also this is the other way to do it.

Justin: It’s a very empathetic approach to marketing. It’s very value first and we’re here to serve you if you need us but it’s really about knowing that we will get you the solution even if you don’t buy from us sort of thing.

Justin: There’s one step beyond that, which I think is you’re hinting at or it feels like you’re hinting at which is, the person who is, who maybe has a pain point, but isn’t actively looking for the solution yet. Maybe in some ways it’s our job as marketers to shine a spotlight on the fact that they do have this pain point. One bad way of going about it is something like putting a flier on someone’s car.

Justin: So the million dollar question is, what are the ways in which we disrupt someone to let them know that they have a pain that we can solve? And from an ethic standpoint, it’s all right here if you want us.

Justin: It’s the kind of question, their like, um? What is worth disrupting someone for?

Dan: Oh, okay.

Justin: Maybe it’s a philosophical question as well, so I think about this a lot. I maybe have my focus in SCO and inbound marketing because I may have an aversion to disruptive marketing, you know to inserting one’s will into someone else so they focus on you.

Dan: Right, right.

Justin: But on the other hand there’s a lot of us really working on solutions to help other people and to get those solutions out sometimes you have to disrupt. We know something like the fliers on the car is not the right way to do it. Everything that you’re saying up till this point feels like the right way to do it.

Dan: That feels so right to hear, wow.

Justin: Perfect, perfect. There’s nothing disruptive about being already on the running track, they’re already focused on running, you see you already met them where they’re at. I’m not someone who just got out of the Mall of Millennia, I’m thinking about maybe my clothes, my recent purchases and now I’ve got this solution to one of my pain points on my car. Instead, I’m already on the track, I’m running, I’m already thinking about running. My focus is here and now you’re supplementing that with hey, if you like running, here’s this community that we’re building around it, that might be this solution to a pain you’ve already had, which what do you think is a solution that, whereas you offered to runners by themselves?

Dan: Yeah so it was something that was very, joining a group, training for something and understanding the demographics that really will join a running group or a club for that matter, it’s usually, and this was data from I think three or four years ago, female age 30-42. These aren’t really necessarily elite athletes, these are more of the types that started out or believe that they are weekend warriors, right? They’re the ones that get littered up with all these things, these projects to make them run faster, run better to stay safe.

Dan: So approaching that I never thought that another running group was our competition. The only competition that I saw was people that did not believe that they either had a place in that running group or that they were too fast for our running group.

Justin: Okay, I see.

Dan: So the way that I approached that was simply well, understanding that, the emotional strategy there and I started to think, I’m the only person that’s doing this. I got to a point of where I did have contracted coaches that would come and supplement some of the longer endeavors we went on, or the runs, but it was just me. I’m like, how do I handle a scalable business by myself and so I came up with the idea of highly individualized training in a group setting.

Dan: I designed courses and workouts that would not allow anyone to see who was the fastest or who was the slowest. So at that point everything was based off of percentage. So we’ll say that this, make it very easy, one lap, you know two laps around the track, okay let’s all go 60% effort. Now I’m the type that believes 100% effort, no ones giving it until the day they die, right because 100% to me is everything that I possibly have and I’m dead afterward.

Dan: So at most I was really looking at someone to give me 85%, right, close, vomiting, you know maybe some coming out of the nose a little bit, but that was the most I was really looking to push somebody that wanted to go there, but that 85% is very different based off of your individual abilities.

Dan: So by not saying, alright, here’s our five minute mile group, here’s our 15 minute mile group, let’s focus on individual percentage and again the courses I would run for the long run, designed for the long runs, they were either looped or they were back and forths. So you never knew, nobody ever got dropped, which is a big fear, right, I never want to be left alone in the middle of some overly wooded running trail by myself with all these literally sparkly lights around me so I don’t get hit by a car and all of a sudden I get bears attacking me. That’s the thought process right?

Justin: And it even beyond the actual fear, losing the pack is also losing the camaraderie.

Dan: Precisely.

Justin: And that’s something that people want. Yeah absolutely.

Dan: There’s a lot of running stores that they are trusted in their running groups right, because well it’s a running store, they specialize in running so therefore they must have credible coaches and that’s where I should be.

Dan: However Justin, those running stores are designed to create training programs that believe, make you believe that you need them, the products they sell within, the shoes, the insoles, the gizmos, the gadgets, all these things. That was the antithesis, the anti mission statement of what WareZoo was about because we believed that we didn’t need the product, we believed in conditioning the body, the smallest muscle groups and the largest all together and the systems they’re within to be the only thing that you needed.

Dan: I’ve heard stories and I’m sure you’ve heard stories too, because you’ve done this before as well, you’ve been on the courses, long courses and you know people that have been taken out of a race they trained a year for because they took a banana gel instead of a strawberry gel and my stomach got all upset and I gagged and I just quit the race. Are you kidding me? Like that’s what took you out?

Dan: No. That’s not what took you out, you wanted to be out and you used that as the escape route. So we took that angle and that’s actually how I got into coaching Justin was, I worked at a running store, a very small one and the coach that they had, they actually had to fire two weeks before the program ended. So this was like a six month program, he was so bad they had to fire him because he was criticizing people for carrying water on the trail. He was only catering to the fastest two or three out of the total 20.

Dan: So they fired him and then the owner of the running store, listen Dan we got a, I know that you’re a pretty good runner, we have two weeks left, just ride a bike next to these people and just make sure that they stay upright relatively.

Dan: So that was my intro to coaching endurance sports and with that I discovered a much needed, well need, and that’s something that I could coach and quench and actually grew the business. When I sold the business we had international people even.

Dan: So here in Central Florida there’s a very big Brazilian, South American running group. People that come to our races dominate, right, but there’s a big market with that. I also had a long commute at the running store that I worked at, at the time so I, instead of listening to the same music over and over again I learned Brazilian Portuguese, that’s what allowed me to tap into the Brazilian running market which at that time was booming. That’s when I started picking up virtual clients and scaled the business to that regard.

Justin: Wonderful, wonderful. The, … I only recently learned this and I don’t know the reasons behind this, but I understand that you may have just ran your last marathon.

Dan: Second to last.

Justin: Oh second to last?

Dan: Yeah second to last. So yeah, do you want to talk about that? You brought it up.

Justin: I’d actually, I’d really like to know the why behind it. As long as I’ve know you you’ve been a runner. Actually just for the context, just so we have this on here, can you give us a little background on, to what extent you’ve done endurance events? How many races, how many marathons? Obviously we want to know about your big ones as well too.

Dan: Right, what, okay, wow. Yeah so as far as the marathon, 26.2 miles, that’s 14 or 15 or so of them now. Half marathons, I don’t know like five or six of them, I never, before my first marathon I had not done anything past a 10k, so I just went from 10K to marathon.

Justin: Yeah perfect.

Dan: Yeah total, and I was actually smoking cigarettes through my second marathon. Not actually on the course, but you know, that was part of my lifestyle at the time. Yeah so, I looked at it not as a, because I love the idea of running, I looked at it as a way to really uncover what it is to experience to be alive, to be a human, right, what are our capabilities and so on.

Dan: But yeah, so I got into running, many marathons, many half marathons, I’ve gone across the state of Florida multiple times, once with a, twice with a team, once on the lonesome. 50 milers, a few of those. It’s been endurance and that’s when I’ve really understood the idea that you absolutely can coach heart and gut by the way, a lot will say you can’t but that’s really what is the driving force, it’s not mental, it’s not physical only, it’s really mostly emotional endurance that, in business, in athletics, in life that allows you to achieve what you need to achieve.

Dan: So my most recent marathon I had not run more than five miles collectively in the six months going up to that.

Justin: Wow, really wow, really wow.

Dan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For the sake of hyperbole or for fun, but I literally, I truly exchanged glasses of bourbon per mile, you know what our normal regimen would be for six months or so leading up to that point, but anyway it was a really big event for me in the fact that it was returning to something that I used to have sacred in my life.

Dan: I had no preparation but of course the guy that firmly believes and lead many others to develop an emotional endurance, it’s like alright, I am going to do this today and there, it doesn’t matter if it’s hard or easy, I just, do I want to or do I not want to, I mean I want to, then I’ll do it.

Dan: That fricken sucked. It was terrible. I mean I hurt so much worse than even my first one. It was just terrible, terrible, terrible, but I got it done because again it was something that I wanted to do. The majesty within that, and this is something that I did not think of until the moment, prior to this, prior to having a family, a wife, a daughter I would look, you know after I would finish the race I would sit in the bleachers and I would watch people finish the race behind me.

Dan: You would always see the dad, the mom, whoever the parent take their kid, you know, hand them over the fence and like run with them the last 50 feet across the finish line, like that’s such a touching moment right? Now I didn’t think about that going into it, but one I took that final turn for the home stretch, there was my daughter-

Justin: Adalie?

Dan: Yeah exactly Adalie and I turn back around and this is a point where I could barely move. It’s like I stopped which sucked and you know how that feels, went back grabbed her and then took her across the finish line.

Justin: Maybe Adalie should carry you actually a little bit.

Dan: She very well could’ve, I mean it was all a blur to me, she might have been the force taking me there but-

Justin: Oh yeah, just holding daddy’s hand, pulling you a long.

Dan: Exactly, but that is something that is always going to be a driving force with me and again the metaphor, the story within that is that there is so much more than we believe to our goals. My goal was to simply exercise, the idea of doing something that I should not have been doing and I get turned on by that kind of thing.

Dan: Once I saw that I was achieving that, then there’s uncovered the deeper majesty and then the multiple meanings within that, seeing my daughter, having that moment, and again, I thought that I was done with running but that was the moment that I had always, subconsciously looked for.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah, it really is beautiful.

Justin: So we covered so much all ready and the thing I really want to get back to is, we actually have four E’s but only one E has been covered.

Dan: Oh Justin, you wrote it down? Good for you. Yes absolutely. So the four E’s of profitable communication, first one, has to be done in this order, we said it before, emotional connection is, has to be there before otherwise everything else is not even going to be implemented.

Dan: The next is education. Once you have that emotional connection, that’s when you can start-

Justin: I’m going to write these down as we go because-

Dan: Perfect, perfect, it will work for you, it will work for you. So yeah, the emotional connection, then the education. Once you have the emotional connection, that’s when people will watch a 30 minute video about who you are, what you do, or how you can do it for them or again read your blogs, whatever it is. That’s when they’re now ready to be educated because they’re seeking you out in what you do for them, but again, the principal of it is that it’s not the story of you, it’s a story of them and how you supplement, how you’re the supporting actor if you will into their role.

Justin: Have you heard of the Hero’s Journey, that story arc?

Dan: Yes.

Justin: So a lot of times I see companies failing to recognize that the customer is the hero of the journey and you are, what would the analogy in the Lord of the Rings? The wizard, the wise-

Dan: You’re the wizard huh?

Justin: We as the marketers are wizards.

Dan: I was thinking more like a Samwise Gamgee kind of deal, like-

Justin: Oh interesting, interesting.

Dan: You’re the one carrying the bread, you’re the one kind of keeping them on track in their discovery journey with that in a sense but maybe-

Justin: I really do like it as well, but the point is the customer has an initial state, they have some reason for change, some call to adventure, … you’ve found a solution or you’ve relieved their pain point in some way, and now they’ve returned back to their original state of better for the experience. A lot of times the education is just, as you mentioned before, starting with credentials, hey this is why you should trust me, heres why you should follow me rather than talking about yourself, or talking about the other person.

Justin: So we have an emotional connection, so basically meeting somebody where they are at, I say meeting them where they’re at but how would you even give advice to someone to meet someone emotionally?

Dan: Okay. So let’s do this, right now I’m working within real estate marketing, so let’s imagine you being the active agonist that you are and you’re moving out of this phenomenal downtown loft more to the suburb life, okay? Now imagine if you could even, okay we’re going to go back to a traditional standard of marketing, not on the VR and digital band wagon, but it’s, you get a piece of print mail and on that print mail tells you the area that you might me moving to or thinking about moving to, or an attractive’s going to show you all the running trails, or bike trails in that area, it’s going to show you where the best places, the local places, not the Planet Smoothies, but like the, where you can get a good cup of cold pressed juice or something like that.

Dan: They’re speaking to you on an emotional level, they’re blending in, that’s actually kind of, that is what I call the chamaeleon approach within the Spirit Animals of Marketing, is hitting them where they want to be, what they’re speaking to their interests right? So you have that and then of course there’s your contact information, what you do, what you’re about, and again, it pertains to your business.

Dan: So automatically you’re wearing, showing up in those same colors of that tribe, people always want to do business with people who are in the same tribe in a sense.

Justin: I can certainly see that way.

Dan: They’re speaking to you emotionally and therefore you have that leg up if you will as opposed to all those people that are just saying report card, report card, report card. I sold 10 homes the last 10 days, that’s why you should have me, they get 50 million of those. So it’s that emotional connection.

Justin: So we have emotional connection, we have education, what’s our third E?

Dan: It depends on, at this point the longevity. If you’re somebody that counts on return client base or just like a one off, but so the emotional connection, education, and then engagement. Engagement is a variable in there so if you’re looking for a repeat client or clientele you have to be engaged with them and it has to be in ways, not as a Trojan Horse.

Dan: So again, with real estate its always good to know, to remind people that you do what you do, so maybe sending them a birthday card or something right, but if your business card is in there or a stack of them and it’s just company letterhead or printed real quick then they obviously get the idea. However if you write a hand written message in an actual birthday card, that’s speaking to a lot more of an emotional one off kind of thing. So engaging, also because of social media too.

Dan: A lot of times real estate agents will understand the value of social media, they get a Hootsuite or something that’s automated right, and they turn it out there, they’re posting every single day technically but they’re not responding or engaging authentically back, if at all with their clientele or people that are following them. So it’s a huge deal there too.

Dan: So the engagement and that’s what I call basically assembling a pack of die hard disciples as opposed to the ark mentality. The ark is come one, come all kind of thing. Technically I guess it’s two by two but let’s dissolve that variable for a minute because the idea is you don’t want to amass everybody as your clientele, because it’s just too much. You have to find people that you can have that connection with and those will be the people that will go out of their way if you stay relevant in their life to refer you, to spread your gospel in a sense, not to get biblical here of course.

Dan: So engagement but if you’re in a business that is just simply one and done kind of thing you can actually cross that one out. So emotional, education, engagement and then that one comes down to encouragement.

Justin: Encouragement?

Dan: Encouragement is the necessary step and if you were to look at the job description or attributes of a great, a phenomenal sales person, you would think that persuasion is part of that description. There’s evil in persuasion, it’s all about encouragement. So persuasion is taking somebody, most likely attacking their pain points, grabbing them by the wrist and then pulling them over to your side.

Dan: Whereas encouragement you have everything before, emotional, education, and engagement and you’re encouraging them. You arm them with knowledge, education, everything to now, where they’re coming over to your side if it makes sense for them, right, at that point that’s where they become one of those die hard disciples that will go out of their way to spread your story, your spirit.

Dan: Last one of course is execution. We all know what that means right.

Justin: Do we know what that means?

Dan: Execution, that’s when the deal is done, the sale has been made, that’s when the transaction has happened, but it’s, that’s the thing, it has to be done in that order. People always jumble it up, they put one before, and even if you put one before the other, the whole thing is just, well think of an E, … extrapolated into and extraneous-

Justin: We’re already at five E’s now. We added execution.

Dan: It’s done. It’s done. Execution is the final spot.

Justin: You started this by prefacing that some people pigeon hole their words into some sort of an alliteration and here we are just tackling on.

Dan: They just happen to be all with E’s, it’s just an amazing cosmic thing.

Justin: There was no deliberateness?

Dan: No there was not. Deliberate was not part of my equation, another E.

Justin: I love it. Oh my God. Just to do a recap everybody, we have emotional connection.

Dan: Has to be there first.

Justin: So that’s number one. Education.

Dan: Yep.

Justin: Okay, so communicating value.

Dan: Correct.

Justin: Engagement, so not treating, in some ways not treating your audience as just a number.

Dan: You have to speak and listen. It’s basically what we can dumb it down to in a sense, but again that’s really only essential, oh God another E, if you want again that repeat clientele. If you’re in a business model where you’re just looking for those one off client, customers then that part is not as important.

Justin: I see. Then finally, well not quite finally but encouragement before execution.

Dan: Precisely.

Justin: I do like that you distinguish between encouragement and persuasion. I use the term persuasion a lot but I also have a hard time using the term because it has some negative connotations. I try to delineate persuasion from manipulation, I think there’s something about, … manipulation is the part of persuasion that kind of happens in the shadows.

Dan: But often celebrated though in the office so to speak.

Justin: Often celebrated in the office so to speak?

Dan: Yeah when you can come and deliver a tale of how you closed a deal and all the hoops you had to jump through and all the things that you had to combat them with as far as their opposition to joining your initiative in a sense. I’ve experienced first hand a lot of sales people that will like you said, manipulate it and then sometimes blunt the edges and try to convey products or services that you may not be able to provide them kind of thing.

Dan: Sot that’s again not you, not me, not anybody that’s necessarily listening to this or watching this, but that is a commonly practiced thing. I mean just think about a salesmen, when you first think of salesmen you think of shiester, right? Car salesmen, why do we think of that? That’s just and to go back to the previous assertion of the wolf, wolf of Wall Street, right?

Justin: That was the exact same thing I was leading up to.

Dan: Nobody wants, I want that to be dissolved, obliterated, turned into a firework and launch it out there. That’s not what a wolf is and that’s not who a sales person should be, as a master manipulator or a snake oil, you dealer or anything.

Justin: Yeah. We have this weird situation where even if you are practicing manipulative techniques, but you’re surrounded in a company culture that reinforces that sort of thing in the same way that Wolf of Wall Street was, certainly closing the deal at the expense of the customer was celebrated in ways that maybe aren’t as pro social, that are maybe more sociopathic or pathological than we’d like to encourage our listeners to behave.

Justin: I think that’s the sort of thing that had a certain life span that is going to die out increasingly as we have more transparency. Even with something like social media, I think it’s going to be harder and harder to get away with … self-serving behavior when it comes to marketing.

Dan: Sure and I get where you’re coming from that. The thing though, the final blow to the whole system of manipulation on the sales side, it has to, commissions, that has to end. I think commissions are dated, I think you should pay somebody on the sales side a fair and very valued salary in a sense to where their, where they can bring home possibly to their family, to their kids, whatever, whoever they’re serving with that salary, that money. They don’t have, they won’t be put into a position where they have to falsify, forge, or bend the truth of what the entity is behind them.

Justin: Yeah absolutely. I mean we really need to align incentives, for anybody listening the best thing to look up to learn more about this is the agency problem. Just go to Wikipedia the agency problem to learn more about that. It’s in my opinion one of the most pressing concepts everybody should learn, and understand so we can have a more pro social, you social society. Where it’s getting along and acting in selfish ways that have negative externalities on other people.

Justin: so cool, we’ve wrapped up some of our E’s here. I want to ask you, back to your book, the Spirit Animals of Marketing, so that Spirit Animals, Animals is plural so there’s not just a wolf within the Spirit Animals of Marketing, what other animals are in the Spirit Animals of Marketing?

Dan: Good question, alright. So yeah, there’s multiple animals, just as you’ve cracked the code of the majesty of the S at the end of the word. There’s good and the bad, so we’ve talked about the wolf, we’ve talked briefly about the chameleon, right they can blend in. Just to basically summarize it really quickly it’s like Coca-Cola, so what do polar bears, NASCAR, and EDM or extreme sports all have in common? Nothing except for the fact that Coca-Cola does a great ad campaign that immediately speaks to those people, the sentimental and sometimes more feminine or just whatever it is, polar bears? Ah, there’s a Coke, right?

Dan: They’re not selling product, they’re selling the idea, the vibe for product, the emotional connection of a product. NASCAR, more masculine, some are sports, whatever it is. So they are blending in with that demographic and that demographic now understands that they are again wearing their same tribal colors.

Dan: So it’s a quick one and off, not as a long commitment engagement as the wolf but at the same time, the chameleon has the ability to stand out. They can change the pigmentation of their scales and instead of blending into a blue wall, now it’s fuchsia, that little chameleon. That goes into the idea again, if it’s authentic, standing out, and people will adore you if you’re authentic and able to stand out because that’s interesting to them. People love it just in, that’s the idea of the chameleon.

Dan: Then there of course is the angular fish, that is the-

Justin: Isn’t that the deep sea one, that has the line going over it?

Dan: Very deep sea, exactly and the little light that flicks exactly.

Justin: I’m pretty sure it was in Finding Nemo too.

Dan: Precisely yes, yes, yes. So Finding Nemo, that’s where it was, it’s also yeah.

Justin: Planet Earth.

Dan: Yeah Planet Earth, yeah. It’s everywhere Justin, it’s even, let me tell you this, don’t get worried, don’t get scared. Angular Fish are all around us, even here on land.

Justin: Oh my God, metaphorically?

Dan: Yes. So the idea behind the angular fish is if something is too good to be true, then it most likely is. The sake of, of course the public, the consumer. So angular fish of course, dangles that very elusive and very novel source of light where no light really shines. Those little fish swim up to it because it’s so unique, then all of a sudden behind it there’s a briar patch full of teeth closing in on them and then they’re done.

Dan: Click bait also, click bait’s also another form of the angular fish. So you know, we’ve all seen it before, the end of your article that you read online, you won’t believe what this Mississippi bride did at the alter, click here to find out kind of thing. Then it’s this never ending tail rabbit hole of clicks, screens pop up, all this crazy shit.

Dan: So then it’s again representing something that is too good to be true in a more concrete context. Simply if you’ve been somebody that prides yourself on communication with your clients and you did not return their phone call or their email in what would be recognized as a okay amount of time, you might just be an angular fish because you’re presenting something, selling them something, especially in real estate.

Dan: There’s surveys all the time done on the consumer side of what does somebody look for in a real estate agent? You would think number one would be selling the home, that’s actually number three or four on the list. Number one is marketing, go figure. Two is communication, three or four is actually selling the home in itself.

Dan: So communication is very, very important. So again, that’s how you can become the angular fish but if you’ve not returned every phone call or email or text and you find yourself as an angular fish, don’t worry there is a cure, you can recover from that, okay? So that is another animal and the last one, second to last one, the lioness.

Dan: Not the lion, it’s the lioness and we always think and I don’t understand.

Justin: They play such different roles.

Dan: Such different roles and it’s always the lion, the male lion that is celebrated when you know in quotes and beliefs. Now listen, I understand, there are some cultures and pseudo religious types of mentality where the lion is more sacred. So this is nothing that is attacking that per say, but just simply the activity of a male lion is not what most people think. A male lion sleeps about 22 hours a day.

Justin: He sleeps about 22 hours a day?

Dan: Correct.

Justin: Oh my God.

Dan: He doesn’t hunt, he doesn’t hunt. His job is just simply to defend if he is challenged and will sometimes defend the pack behind, or the pride behind him.

Justin: Certainly.

Dan: It’s the lioness that goes out there and does what we think is a lion’s duty. She navigates, she hunts, she brings it back, gives her fair share to the lion and the rest of the pride and then she eats last.

Dan: So that sounds like, to me, influencer marketing. When you trust somebody to go out, deliver the message of your brand, to do, to execute what you need them to execute, navigate through their channels and their gain trails if you will, through their Savannah and then bring it back to you, bring the profits back to you.

Dan: Now the lion’s not completely out of the picture in this, they’re, to be the lion, is to be the major corporation that is implementing these strategies and the abilities of the influencer marketers, but it’s tough to do because that is your baby, the idea of now trusting your image or brand, your business with somebody else and they might be so opposite which is most likely the case.

Dan: So why you’re trusting them to be your influence as opposed to yourself, because you might be out of touch, you know what I mean? So they can speak to an audience-

Justin: Speaking of how the lion represents the brand?

Dan: Precisely, precisely. So that’s activate, the lion is the influencer, the one that will do the majority of the work, but you are there to defend.

Justin: What will do the lions share of the work.

Dan: Precisely, oh, Justin, ah, this is why I’m glad we’re here man. Lastly it’s seriously, and I’ll wrap it up real quick, the apex Spirit Animal of Marketing, it seriously is a human.

Dan: The reason why is because we have the unique ability to separate the red line, the alerts going off within us, and push forward. So being an Ironman yourself, you’ve seen, you may have experienced the sensation of crossing the finish line and collapsing or seeing people that turn to jelly legs as soon as they cross the finish line.

Dan: Now if that finish line, had it been 10 feet further, do you think they would have collapsed prior or do you think they would’ve made it to the finish line and then collapsed then?

Justin: Made it further, and collapsed then.

Dan: Precisely, precisely. So the, and it isn’t that, jelly legs, the cement legs, whatever you want to call them, didn’t happen in that finish line chute, it probably happened 40, 50 miles back, but they fought through it, that didn’t happen in the wolf, the lion, or any really other animal out there.

Dan: If you know, lets go back to the wolves, if those bison secretly joined like a cross fit or gym or something and all of a sudden developed these abilities to out run the wolf and out smart the wolf, right, those wolves aren’t going to persist on those bison to the point of dying. Once their alarms going and you’re overheating, you’re fatiguing, those wolves will back off and they’ll go hungry that night.

Justin: Help me map that to marketing.

Dan: Sure. Ah.

Dan: So marketing, well human, well most marketing is done by humans Justin, the estimate is not known but most marketing is done by humans and so the driver that, the impetuous? Is that the?

Justin: I’ll know after you continue.

Dan: Perfect. Asterisks, asterisk, but anyway, the driving horse behind that is the human initiative, the effort, the abilities to be. So if marketing, are you looking for a specific example per se of a marketing strategy with a human?

Justin: In the same way you were able to map the chameleon to Coca-Cola, I would love to get an idea of how something like recognizing a finish line and then reframing.

Dan: I got you. This is going to go back, way back to just that tired door to door salesman, selling vacuum cleaners or whatever, right? Now he’s the only guy with three or four vacuum cleaners to sell, or she may have, but back in the ’40s or ’50s when this is popular, it was most likely a he.

Dan: So going, knowing that they only have four to sell, they probably have to knock and go into and demo probably 60, 70, 80 houses right? So it’s that tenacity, that ability to try to present your best self. Now again, that typ of methodology, I don’t always believe as far as the structure or the bullet point of principles, in that approach to marketing or salesmanship. However, the unyielding force to move forward, even when the sun is set and your knuckles are calloused, that would be I guess the metaphor in the human spirit of marketing.

Justin: Okay, I can certainly expect that. I can certainly accept that. You certainly think very high of human as far as I’m concerned.

Dan: It surprises me that I do, but I do, you know, I mean it’s, because again, you have the ability, you are enough and once you realize that-

Justin: You know I’ve heard plenty of people say that their spirit animal is this, there spirit animal is this, I haven’t heard anybody say my spirit animal is a human.

Dan: Interesting right.

Justin: Maybe we need more of that.

Dan: I think so. I think so.

Justin: You brought up already my experience with endurance events as well, too. I’ve had my own share of heart break out on the course, I’ve had my own share of demotivation, I’ve had my own share of, not just in training but actually on the course. I think we all have our own why’s for why we do it. We all have our own things that drive us, even under the overwhelming pressures to just quit.

Justin: Dan, like what, you’ve done it at such a high caliber, at such a, … exceptional level, when you’re doing things like, for those of you that don’t know, what’s the Goofy Challenge again?

Dan: Oh that was a half and a full marathon back to back, Saturday, and Sunday. Running that two days in a row.

Justin: Do they, they have a 5K before that too?

Dan: Yeah so Disney’s mastered this whole thing right and they’ve created a high priced and awesome medal for every event. So now these poor people are running from like Wednesday to Sunday, 5K, 10K, half marathon, full marathon.

Justin: Loving every minute I’m sure.

Dan: Yeah.

Justin: So, in the lowest parts, we’ve all been there, not just in running, not just in endurance events, what keeps you going?

Dan: That’s a really good question, and it’s understanding the separation between mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. Setting them an objective and attaching it to something outside of you, is the only way that you will win with that basically. Now I’ll explain, so if I were to out there and do a marathon, and I’ve done this before or my first attempt, my first two attempts at the 50 miler distance, I did it because I wanted to say that I could cross that 50 miler line.

Justin: I see.

Dan: Made it 20, 30 miles and then I tapped out because my ankle was breaking, my diaphragm was spasming all these things happened, right?

Justin: In his defense, you were running through a trail and in the woods, this was like-

Dan: Memorial day, and it’s swampy palmetto sugar sand.

Justin: I want everybody listening to really just understand what an animal Dan Pacheco is. This man is out, is on another planet, is out of this world, but continue.

Dan: I appreciate that Justin, but the idea is, my first successful attempt and also least trained for 50 miler attempt was the one that I completed. At that point, before that, I decided to dedicate every single mile to somebody meaningful in my life. Nothing that had to do with me, not weight loss, not cooler hair, not a better car. It was 50 people externally that had meant something to me.

Dan: At that point I knew that if I made it to 30, mile 30 that I’d be letting 20 people down. If you structure it, whatever works for you, sometimes you can just randomize the list but more from that you save the last two or three bits, miles, for the most important people in your life.

Dan: So you definitely don’t want to let them down right? This is the funny thing, with endurance sports or even with efforts in business and marketing, life, whatever it is, … you know why you don’t deserve it, you know your darkest secrets, you know the things, the terrible things you may or may not have done, you know those more than anybody else knows those about you.

Dan: So you, once things start spinning, once the red alarms start going off inside you justify that saying, I don’t deserve this right now. Whether that be on the front of your mind or the back of the mind, that’s what the driving force is, the darkness there.

Dan: When you understand that you’ve attached that, even told that person that you’re dedicating this mile to them, or that milestone, that’s when you will vomit dirt up if you have to. That’s where you will run to where you have no feet left or your feet are so, that’s when you will do anything, whatever it takes to get it done in their name.

Dan: So living outside of yourself on, attaching goals outside of you to people that mean something to you in your life, that is what got me through it, through my first 50, that’s what got me through traveling what was literally twice around the planet earth in a short period of time.

Justin: Yeah, a couple thousand miles, yeah.

Dan: Having to play peek-a-boo with my daughter through FaceTime, all that stuff is because I knew that the goal was attached to something else, something of her benefit, my daughters benefit, my wife’s benefit, my family’s benefit, that’s what got me there.

Justin: There’s an African proverb that I really like, that I only got introduced to recently but that really means a lot to me. I think for a long time I made the mistake of … not realizing that the purpose of it is doing it for others. Doing the service of others and the African proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”

Dan: I love that.

Justin: I like that too.

Justin: I think anybody that knows you Dan, knows that … the ways in which you are extroverted, the ways in which you are comfortable in your own skin, the ways in which you express yourself are … are probably honestly amiable to a lot of people. People who may be fearful to the idea of being too vulnerable, being too much of themselves.

Justin: It seems to me that you’ve been comfortable in your own skin or at the very least pretending to be comfortable in your own skin for a very long time. It comes off very natural, it comes off very authentic.

Justin: What could you possibly say to someone who wants to see you leading by example and follow your lead?

Dan: That’s a really, really great question because that, the why to that is something that’s very important to me and very important into communicating effectively with others and that’s basically the answer.

Dan: So I was very shy as a kid and in a lot of settings, I still am very shy. To give you a quick little tid bit, I was so shy and played so much by the rules, disrespect to anything that bent from the rules. In kindergarten when you have stations, you have a listening station, painting station, that’s just a way for the teacher to manage small multiple kids.

Dan: So we had station day and my station at that time was in the back, farthest corner of the room, and it was a little audio station so there were three of us there sitting on these little rubber mats and listening to a tape and I really, really had to go pee, right, and well of course you have to raise your hand before anything, you certainly can’t get up without permission.

Dan: So the teacher’s not seeing, you can’t shout, right because you can’t yell inside. So all of these things led me to try to hold it as best that I could, but I could not hold it anymore and I peed my pants and it was mortifying for me at that time and I was so embarrassed that I did not want to tell anybody right?

Justin: Certainly.

Dan: So, I just went around from station to station with soaked little jean shorts and spread pee all over the room. Of course, it was found out, right, it doesn’t take a-

Justin: As these things get found out.

Dan: I got found out, my first scandal and then I got sent to the front, not office but clinic right where there’s always an emergency pair or outfit, in case you really did something, well I guess like that. Mine, it just got worse, now I totally rock and own it, but at the time again, it was very conscious.

Justin: Now you’re kind of apologetic about it.

Dan: Right, but it was this pair of just really rough fabric cheap, like pseudo Hawaiian print shirt and shorts that my grandparents had gotten me like two years ago. So they didn’t, it didn’t fit. I was a hefty kid, so it just wasn’t flattering, washed me out, just all these terrible things.

Dan: So it was just a terrible, terrible day and that was kind of the mentality, the gist of how, just much I want to play by the rules. The fact that I would piss my own pants and still not tell anybody about it. With that said, growing up, moving around so many times, I went to five different elementary schools, lived in so many different states, met so many different types of people, that allowed me to not reinvent myself but to kind of just shift and rearrange and present something new.

Dan: As I got into middle school, as I got into high school, that’s really when I came into just simply being well, myself and being okay with that. After, gosh the last, I did over 53,000 miles traveling around in an 18 month span meeting with people in real estate talking about marketing, branding, developing, all these great things.

Dan: Now that I’m off the road with that, and out of the spotlight on a regular basis, I’m finding myself wanting to become more of that creative introvert again. Not so much to go out to mixtures, be on stage anymore because it’s kind of shifting back and I’m discovering now that’s always been a part of me.

Dan: However, the reason that I’ve kind of started getting into the spotlight and the reason that I will still be there as long as it is willing to be shone upon me, is because I believe that everybody has a brand, therefore, everybody has an audience. I don’t care how polarizing your viewpoints are, there is a group of people that will be your audience.

Dan: I hate the idea of people having to package themselves and temper down their personality for the sake of being an easy grab and go 12 ounces version of themselves off the shelf, but depending on the profession that we’re in, depending on who we are in life we have to play by the rules and at what point did we all decide that gray, olive, earth tones, black is professional, that chartreuse is not professional, that tattoos are somehow are the symbol of the devil, like when did all this start, how did that get decided?

Justin: Certainly, certainly.

Dan: So my objective in doing what I do at any level is to help people realize that one, they have a brand. If they’re able to be authentic they will often be adored for it. To go back to that cold scenario in the room, you know with the stuffy room and we’re approaching people and being shut down. Imagine if somebody, you know we just heard the sound of something outside in the valet and we go out there and we see this monster truck jump over the curb, it’s blasting AC/DC, this person gets out dressed in you know, hot neon, whatever it is. Tosses the keys to the valet, strolls in, they haven’t said a word to anybody, they don’t fit in, in that scenario, they shouldn’t be here in the confines of what is acceptable to be here, but dammit do we want to at least have a conversation with them, because that’s, they are being themselves, they may not fit in but dammit they have the attention.

Dan: That’s what marketing, that’s what business, it’s all about. You can have whatever you need. Spend as much money as you can on systems, things, but if you don’t have attention, you don’t have a damn thing.

Dan: So when you’re able to do that, my why, my reason is to help uncover people within that. I firmly believe that there is no transformation, we do not need to be more. That’s always a thing, you a transformation Tuesday, whatever it is, and that creates the idea within us that we have to always be more, but imagine, just meditate on this for a moment and you too Tanner to think about this, … that you are enough right now.

Dan: Everything that you need, you don’t have to go and learn more, do more. I mean learning, which is good, but you don’t have to go and go to an $800 seminar to have a Tony Robbins type come and put something in you. Like no coach, guru, they’re not going to put anything inside of you. If they’re a good one, they’re going to help uncover what’s inside of you, but no ones putting anything inside of you.

Dan: So everything that you have done, that you will ever do, the ingredients are already within. You don’t need to transform, you just simply need to uncover. We have these beautiful gem stones inside of us that have so much sediment around them, some people more than others, but we still have that in the center of it. So just uncovering that, allowing yourself to shine, that’s why I do, that’s what I do.

Justin: Really beautiful sentiment. Really beautiful sentiment. So a couple short fire or rapid questions. First one is, … how do you consume most media both Podcast?

Dan: Most of my media comes down from scanning the article for videos.

Justin: Scanning the article for videos?

Dan: Yeah. So I’ll get a headline that interests me. If I see that there’s more than five paragraphs I’m not going to read that really, most likely, I’m just looking for a video that summarizes it all up.

Justin: That’s more for news stuff?

Dan: Well, okay.

Justin: Do you, if you were proactively going out and looking for some sort of entertainment, like in the same way someone would read a book, or someone would go to YouTube and look for content, what’s your preferred medium for that?

Dan: Podcasts.

Justin: Podcasts.

Dan: Absolutely.

Justin: Okay perfect, that leads me to my next question, what Podcasts are you listening to right now that you would love to recommend to anybody listening?

Dan: Oh this is going to go a different way that you think Justin, because I don’t really know, I just scan for subjects and I’m not loyal to any one specifically. I am looking strictly for that interesting subject, and a unique viewpoint. I think, I call it the group pod mentality. That’s really dissolved the loyalty to a lot of services, spas for example. You’re just looking for the cheapest rate and for someone to put hands on you in a relaxing way.

Justin: Okay. Do you go about this way, do you go about searching for these Podcasts with a subject already in mind or?

Dan: Nope. Nope, it’s totally whatever hits me first. That is kind of, sometimes, well I believe so much in duality, well sometimes that’s how I am. With every aspect of my life. Flipping quick, take it as it is, and then a lot of times it’s the other side, predetermined, planned, structured. So, yes. Do you want to do two more questions to wrap it up.

Justin: No, no, no, no. Let’s actually wrap there. I think that’s actually a good ending.

Dan: Okay.

Justin: Dan thank you so much for coming over and so much for speaking with me, for this extended period of time. I really am heart broken that I couldn’t ask more questions, I think I would love to have you back but your insight is always valuable, your charisma is contagious and I hope that everybody listening gets something out of this, I know I certainly did.

Dan: I really appreciate that Justin, and thank you so much for the opportunity, it’s always a pleasure with you.

Justin: Appreciate it.

Justin: Alright guys, that’s the end of the episode, thank you so much for watching. If you have any feedback at all, please feel encouraged to leave it down in the comments section below. I do read it, I do wan to know the ways in which we can improve the show for you. If you liked it and you know somebody else who would find value in watching the show, please do share it with them. Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. Support us in anyway you feel, otherwise we’ll see you next episode. Thanks for watching.

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