Chapter 16
There are a few TV shows that stand out above the rest for the level of cult-like fandom they inspire. Star Trek, which we talked about in chapter 11, with its devoted Trekkies, is one of them. Another is Doctor Who, the British science fiction show about a human-looking alien who explores the universe in a time-traveling spaceship called the TARDIS. After its original run from 1963 to 1989, the show was rebooted in 2005 and has been going strong since. Several decades and nearly nine hundred episodes in, Doctor Who is one of the most beloved shows of all time.
In the span of its existence, the Doctor has been played by thirteen different actors. A big part of the show’s charm and identity is wrapped up in the many faces of its title character, and the speculation and excitement among the fanbase whenever it’s time for the current Doctor to hand over the reins.
In 1972, Peter Capaldi was a fourteen-year-old growing up in Glasgow, Scotland. He was also a huge—and I mean huge—Doctor Who fan. He would write in regularly to newspapers expressing his love for the show. He also became infamous for the amount of fan mail he sent to the official Doctor Who fan club. In one letter he wrote that year, he even asked that he be made president of the club, but the position was sadly already taken. It would take several more decades, but Capaldi eventually got the best consolation prize he could have asked. In 2013, with the incumbent Doctor, Matt Smith, retiring from the role, Capaldi was announced as the twelfth incarnation of Doctor Who, a role he would hold until the beginning of 2017.
It’s hard to think of a more perfect fit as the lead actor in a TV show than someone who grew up living and breathing that show. And in a similar way, it’s hard to think of a better fit for the people who contribute regularly to your team than those who live and breathe your brand.
In part 2, we talked about ways you can get your community members involved in your brand. By giving them even a little bit of a say—a little bit of ownership in your brand and the direction your brand takes—your community is more likely to support you and your business because they’ve invested their time, thought, and energy into it. Getting your community directly involved in your brand is a powerful strategy, and yes, these powers can be used both for good and for evil. We’ll go over the traps that you could fall into while building a tribe of superfans in the last part of the book, but for now, let’s take the idea of community involvement to the next level and talk about how to convert more of those fans into superfans by getting them super involved—as a part of your team.
Not too long ago, April and the kids and I watched a special on Hulu about how the employees at Disneyland decorated the entire park overnight for Halloween. It was remarkable how many of the employees featured were Disney superfans, many of them for almost their entire lives. Disney is part of who they are. There was Antonio Beach, a scenic painter whose grandmother took him to Disneyland when he was just a few years old, and who’d wanted to paint and decorate at Disneyland since he was ten. At the age of twenty-two, finally working at Disney he says was “phenomenal . . . like a dream come true.” Or Karlos Sigueiros, head of the resort’s bakery, who says he “always wanted to work at Disney,” and got his chance during a two-week stint after college, which turned into a summer and became a thirty-three-year career. He brings his two girls to Disneyland every year, and his eldest wants to take over his role when he retires. There was Lisa Borotkanics, the manager of holiday services, who’s in charge of the team that decorates Disney’s cruise ships and has also worked for the company for thirty-three years. And Dave Caranci, who wrote a letter to Disney when he was a kid asking how he could become an “imagineer”—then eventually became one and has worked for the company for thirty-five years.
There’s perhaps no better example than Disney of how successful you can be when you implement this simple strategy: hire your fans. They’re the ones who know your brand, who love what you do, and who will bring a special energy to their role that an outsider may not be able to capture. Whether it’s as a volunteer for a one-time event, or a long-term paid role in the leadership of the company, hiring your fans just makes a ton of sense.
For example, I’ve made some of the most active and helpful members of my Facebook group community administrators. One of those people is Brendan Hufford, who’s been the SPI Facebook community manager for a couple of years. He helps moderate the Facebook group and gives me a pulse on what’s happening in the larger community. He helps the community stay more connected.
Brendan started as a volunteer, motivated to help out by his love for the SPI community and his desire to strengthen the bonds within the community. I introduced him to everybody in the group as the admin, so he would be seen as a leader in the community. Over time, his position has evolved, and I’ve given him more permission to make decisions and share things with the community without asking me first—I’ve empowered him to do what’s right for the community. With that evolution, Brendan’s position has also changed from a volunteer one to a formal paid position.
Another example is John Meese, one of Michael Hyatt’s team members. Michael is an incredible leadership mentor who’s been a great inspiration to me on my own entrepreneurial journey. John started out as an engaged commenter on Michael’s blog, but over the years he became a power user who created tutorials for Michael’s “Get Noticed” WordPress theme. Eventually, Michael hired him as part of the team, and John is now the Dean of Michael’s Platform University, a members-only community that helps people build their own online platforms.
There’s also Staci Ardison, one of the lead trainers at Nerd Fitness, a community and coaching program that helps people break down the barriers preventing them from getting strong and healthy. Staci joined the community in 2010, looking for guidance on her own journey toward better health. She quickly felt at home, and became one of Nerd Fitness’s first success stories in 2011. She then joined the Nerd Fitness coaching team, eventually becoming the lead women’s coach.
Staci’s path beautifully encapsulates the superfan journey, starting as a casual member of the Nerd Fitness target audience, becoming an active and increasingly engaged member of the community whose experiences and accomplishments are shared with the wider group, and flowering into a superfan who steps up to take on a leadership role on the team and eventually becomes a valuable contributor at the core of the business.
Maybe you’re feeling inspired by these examples, and you want to know how to get started making your first hire or finding your first volunteer from your connected community. I’ll start by telling you what not to do. You don’t want to put a general call out saying, “Hey, who would like to be my community leader?” You’re going to get a bunch of responses from people who are interested in the job for a number of different reasons. Instead, you want the process to be more organic and contained. Over time, you’ll naturally start to see people lift themselves up in the community—the ones who contribute a lot and are really excited to be a part of the group—and those people, the ones who self-select for a bigger role, are the ones you should reach out to.
Once you’ve narrowed the candidates and started interviewing them, focus on what they can do to help you better serve the community. In this context, using words like “we” works well because it makes the person feel like they have an opportunity to be part of the team, and keeps the focus on the community you both want to serve. Ask them what they think of your ideas and what you’ve been doing so far, and see if they have any ideas of their own. Keep the conversation focused on the community, and on the opportunity you’re offering them to help shape that community.
One important thing to keep in mind if you bring someone on as a volunteer is to make sure the relationship is fair and balanced. You don’t want to ask too much of them without giving back in return, so be mindful of their workload and what you’re demanding of them. At some point, though, you’ll hopefully find that this person is working out so well that you’ll want to look for more formal ways to compensate them. That could mean giving them more recognition among your audience, doing pro bono work for them, or offering free access to your products. And of course, there’s the option of formally hiring or contracting with them.
If you don’t think you’re ready to bring your fans on as regular volunteers or employees, a great opportunity to get your connected community more directly involved is enlisting them to volunteer for events. Giving people in your audience the ability to influence the flow and the experience of your event can be an incredible way to bring out their inner superfan. Events I’ve attended, like the podcasting conferences Podfest and Podcast Movement, use volunteers to help run the show. The benefits of doing this are twofold. Of course, you can save money. But more importantly, you get to bring on people who really support the brand because they know it and they care about it. They care about the people who are there because they can relate to them. So they’re going to be excited just to be a part of it. And you’ll probably find that, if you put the call out, you’ll have plenty of willing volunteers ready to step up.
But more than giving them a chance to feel like they’re part of something exciting, it’s still nice if you can compensate your dedicated event volunteers in some way, even if you’re not paying them in cold, hard cash. Thankfully, there are lots of ways to repay your volunteers. You can give them free or discounted tickets to the event, and access to VIP perks. You can also thank them publicly at the event, and even bring them up on stage to introduce them to the audience.
When you make an intentional decision to cultivate your connected community into a legion of superfans, giving people the honor and responsibility of serving as a member of your team and a steward of your community will seem like a natural step. It’s really a wonderful thing when your fans become integral members of your team.
This next and final story shows just what your fans can create, and the raving community of their own they can foster, when you use your influence, authority, and resources to lift them up and give them access to opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.
The Walker Stalkers is a podcast about the TV show The Walking Dead. If you’ve never seen The Walking Dead, it’s about a post-apocalyptic world where zombies (known as “walkers”) have taken over. It centers around a number of characters who deal with crazy situations in this world—not just with the walkers, but with the other “normal” people in this world who haven’t yet turned. It can get pretty insane, and I’ll spare you the details in case that’s not your thing. The Walker Stalkers Podcast was created by Eric Nordhoff and James Frazier, two guys who loved the show and wanted to celebrate their affinity for it. But the real magic started when the people behind The Walking Dead were willing to empower these two superfans of the show, a moment that led The Walker Stalkers to evolve into an incredible brand in its own right, one that has become so much more than a podcast.
The first guest Eric and James had on the podcast was Greg Nicotero, who at the time was head of makeup and effects for The Walking Dead. That first interview with Greg went great, and the three of them developed an easy rapport. Eric and James’s connection with Greg gave them access to something other The Walking Dead podcasts at the time (and there were quite a few!) didn’t have: the actors and crew members on the show. With Greg’s help, the guys managed to book more than twenty podcast episodes in a row with actors or crew members. They also created what James calls a “light, fan-interactive atmosphere” where other fans would call in to the show to be a part of the conversation.
“We wanted the fans to be part of it,” says James—also something no other The Walking Dead podcast was doing.
And while Eric and James were opening their podcast to fans of the show, Greg, who went on to become the show’s executive producer, saw the potential value in giving these two fans access to The Walking Dead brand, by connecting them with others in the show’s inner circle.
“He just honored us so much by giving us a good name amongst his peers,” says James. In particular, through their connection with Greg, Eric and James were able to strike up a great relationship with Melissa McBride, one of the actors on the show.
With Greg and Melissa in their corner, Eric and James were set up for success in the next leg of Walker Stalker saga: creating the first Walker Stalker Con fan conference.
Walker Stalker Con started in 2013 in Atlanta, supported by a Kickstarter campaign that nearly missed its target. But it did eventually get funded, and the conference went off successfully. Over the years, thanks to the insider help of Greg and Melissa in convincing a number of other actors on the show to take part, Walker Stalker Con has grown tremendously, drawing bigger and bigger crowds of The Walking Dead fans and even expanding to multiple cities.
Today, Walker Stalker Con is by any measure a massive worldwide success. The 2019 schedule includes conferences in eleven different cities across the US, Europe, and Australia.
In the span of a few years, a small fan podcast turned into a hugely successful annual series of international events, all because a couple of influential people behind The Walking Dead brand were willing to empower those fans with the access they needed to create something magical. As a result, Eric and James, two members of The Walking Dead’s active audience, have created a hugely connected community of their own through their conferences and podcast. With the Walker Stalkers, The Walking Dead now has a legitimate worldwide brand on its side, one that’s helping grow the size and enthusiasm of the show’s own superfans and further cementing the show’s legacy—all because one producer was shrewd enough to connect a couple of fans with some of the talented minds and icons from the show.
You can hear the full story of how Eric and James started their podcast and created the Walker Stalker Con in my conversation with them in SPI Podcast episode 247. Fun fact: they launched the podcast after going through some of my how-to-podcast resources! As a thank-you for helping them get their start, they gave April and me VIP tickets to the 2015 Walker Stalker Con in San Francisco. Stay tuned, because I’ll tell you much more about that in the next chapter, where you’ll learn how to grant your most devoted fans special access to you and your brand while simultaneously giving the rest of your audience something to aspire to: a real VIP experience.