Getting noticed is getting harder and harder and entrepreneurs sometimes need to spend a fortune to getnoticed. But our episode in this episode, Dan Kirby of Tech Department, shares all about social subject and how he used it as a strategy to become noticed without having to spend on marketing, and how you can use it too.
In this episode, Dan also shares how he applied social subject to his podcast, 'Honey, I blew up the business,' by becoming a serving podcast to entrepreneurs, and to their company's Tech Off event by doing something that is not being done by everybody else's. He also shares about he's done audio branding and how it also helps entrepreneurs getnoticed.
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Post-production, transcript and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants
The UnNoticed Entrepreneur is hosted & produced by Jim James.
Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. And today we are going to Bakewell in Darbyshire, home of the famous cakes, to talk to Dan Kirby, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of a company called "Tech Department," and we're going to talk about social objects. Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Kirby:Well, I'm really pleased to be here and excited to have the conversation.
Jim James 1:Well, Dan, you know, you've shared with us about social objects, and we're going to talk about how an entrepreneur can use social objects as a way to start conversations and to build a brand and get noticed without really using any money, but using some creativity. Dan, take us away. Tell us about social objects and how they can be a core part of someone's branding and marketing activities.
Dan Kirby:Well, thank you for the opportunity to do it because social objects my thing. I've stolen gratuitously this concept from a chap called Hugh McLeod, who's quite famous online for his cartoons. He's a cartoonist avatar called "Gaping Void." He's used a lot now in people's presentations a lot. Joe Polish from Genius Network uses his artwork a lot. But, Hugh McLeod has been around for a while. And many years ago, maybe even eight or nine years ago, I read about this concept of social objects and how you use it, how they are the future of marketing is his opinion. So what a social object is, it's like a bottle of wine or a new iPhone. It's an object or a thing that you use to spark a conversation with somebody else. Alright? And in a world of social media where networking and online is really the thing, a social object is a way of you being able to connect with people without it being about what you are selling or specifically you. So it's a third-party element, or object, or thing that allows you to build a relationship with somebody that completely just through the front door. It's a lateral way of building relationship. So in the same way as if you met a stranger and you had the, or they had the latest iPhone, you could have a conversation with them about the iPhone and you could build a relationship through that, and then they will be open to listen to your sales proposition or your marketing message.
Jim James 1:Wonderful. So this social object— what a lovely way of terming what could be—if you say, sort of a "third-party connector," really. So Dan, can you tell us some, you know, examples, practical examples - you're an entrepreneur yourself - how have you used social objects or seen them be used successfully?
Dan Kirby:Well, we've used them twice in my business. So I run a technology company called the "Tech Department," and we're like a plugin tech team for startups. But we've kind of over the years tried to sort of work out ways of marketing because we have a quite a complicated sales process. It's a very relationship-led thing. It's not an easy thing to sort of sell online. We can't really run Google ads for what we do. Often people aren't looking for it or searching for it. So the first iteration of us applying the social object concept was an event series we created about... Well, it was probably eight years ago now, actually. And we thought, "Well, why don't we create an event that was a bit more different than the standard service agency or marketing agency event?" And we created something called the "Tech Off." And the Tech Off's name came from a sort of process that you always used to happen when we started working with a client where an IT guy in our development team, we have a big sort of set two, and we'd call it a "Tech Off" internally, like a joke. And so the Tech Off was, instead of doing a standard agency event where everybody talks about insights and case studies and how great they are, we said, "Well, why don't we get five or six different really good speakers and force them to speak for five minutes each, so they have to cut to the chase. And then the crowd and the audience chooses who wins the Tech Off, and then they get a wrestling belt, and the invitation to come back and defend their title at the next event. So that was the concept, and eventually this thing became known around London and indeed all over the world as the "Love child of TED Talks and WWE Wrestling." And we went from the first event had about 30 people, of which 20 of them were probably employed in some way by the Tech Department. But within a year, we had 600 people in the nightclub in East London, 500 of whom had bought tickets. Night club volume, rocky music, confetti cannons, strobe lights, and two professional wrestlers who were actually had a comedy act on the side who were our security. And if you went over the five minutes, a bell rang and you were literally thrown off stage by the security. So there was a high-pressure environment for our speakers. And the point being it got, that was our social object. So we were, at the time, were working with creative people - a lot of in East London. So we used that as a way of hosting an event, which became something of a cultural event in East London. There was literally cues around the block for our events as a way of, we were the people hosting the party, we were the people hosting the speakers. And that was a social object - a way of starting conversations, of bonding with people, of having something to talk about, which wasn't my business and its proposition, but got us into that relationship.
Jim James 1:Dan, I love that idea. And it sounds as though your Tech Off almost started to eclipse the Tech Department. So why don't you just also then share with us from a lead gen or corporate branding perspective, how did you leverage the Tech Off into more leads. Because, presumably, you've had to put some money in at the beginning to this social object to get it to have some life of its own?
Dan Kirby:Yeah, it is a good question. Because the thing we got wrong with the Tech Off as a social object was there was a kind of, it was a lot of fun and it was great at building relationships, but then the company evolved but the Tech Off was this sort of machine that was operating on its own logic, right? And so there was a misalignment of the strategy of the business and the event. And this, the event was amazingly successful. I mean, we were invited to take it to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And then eventually it was, it's been made into a, a movie pilot by a very award-winning film director based on what we were doing, because it's kind of, he was totally mad. So, on one level, it worked great to build fame, right? So I won loads of awards, probably as a direct result of being seen to be an ambassador for the tech industry around the world, right? Known all over the world, but lots of great relationships. But then, as a lead-gen thing, probably started to lose its stability. Almost, the bigger it got, the less good it was as a lead-gen thing. And so there's a kind of paradox in the middle of that. So it was very good at creating conversation, but not necessarily with the right people. In our defense, the strategy of the business evolved during that time. But what was interesting was it was arguably a distraction from the main business and it led to a period of a time in 2017 where we had a very, very bad year and actually lost a lot of money. And we sort of carried on doing the event through that time, but sort of segued into sort of doing other marketing activity in 2018. So 2017 was a really bad year, but what was interesting is the social object concept never lost its resonance with us. Like we always knew it was a good idea. So what we've done now is taken the lessons from the Tech Off and actually the lessons from our terrible year in 2017, because I think the two things were probably interrelated and applied it to a new social object, which is much, much more aligned to our business proposition and which is a podcast which I run, I host, and which kind of basically building on the story of me blowing up my business in 2017. I now have a podcast called "Honey, I blew up the business," and that itself is a social object.
Jim James 1:I love that and I love that title as well, "Honey, I blew up the business." But you raise, you know, a really good point about the need to align your social object. I created the British Motorsport Festival in China, and in a way that became a financial burden, although it had its own business model, it was quite separate to the business model of importing and selling cars. It was a showcase for multiple British brands in China. With the podcast though, Dan, and you created that as a social object, how are you reconciling, if you like, the investment that you put into that versus the time that you could be spending on the Tech Department, because there's an opportunity cost, isn't there, to developing a social object?
Dan Kirby:Yeah, yeah, that's quite right. And by the way, just so, I think it's quite important to state for as my take on social objects. A social object isn't your new website and it's not your new product, per se, or your new hire, or your new COO, right? That's not a social object. That's an interesting piece of information that you can maybe put out into the world, and that's really great, and you should do that. But a social object is something that transcends the business to sort of make it more interesting to the people who don't know you to start to engage with you. And the key thing is the starting of the engaging, right? Now, what I've been trying to do with the podcast is if you think about it more as a frame around which it fits around my company's proposition, alright? So my company, as I've mentioned, builds digital products predominantly for impact-led entrepreneurs, so people with a social purpose. And so our audience is impact-led entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs. So I figured, "Okay, well, we had this terrible year." And I was, I mean, listen, I lost a load of money. It was bad by any metric, right? And without that, I wouldn't have transformed myself, both in terms of my personal relationships, my fitness, my business, which is now much all of those elements are significantly better today than they were in 2017. And so it was an important lesson for me to grow. So I thought, well, how can I use that insight to help other entrepreneurs, A] avoid what I did, and B] learn other stuff that they can apply to their business, and C] that helps me because I'm trying to build a relationship with entrepreneurs, okay? So a podcast and a media asset can scale exponentially without me being in the room, unlike a physical event. So I figured a podcast, you know, I'm quite confident on chatting to people. And in fact, I learned how to be in the moment at the Tech Off on stage. So I kind of I'm comfortable in that sort of space, so I figure, "Okay, if I speak to entrepreneurs about what their worst experiences were, how they got their businesses back on track on what they learned, that's really much more valuable content than anything the Tech Department can say, however good it is for my audience," right? So I'm just trying to genuinely serve my audience with this social object. Now, through the fact that it's been genuinely trying to serve people, we had an amazing response to the podcast. Within 48 hours, we were number two in the entrepreneurship charts in the UK. We've consistently been top 40 and we're now, as I believe we're a top 5% in the globally top 5% podcast, heard in over 44 countries now. And that's within the, probably about 15 months with zero marketing budget. We don't run any ads, we don't do anything promotion apart from post it on our Twitter feed, do a bit of personal sharing and put it on the platforms. And I've interviewed about 55 different very top-end entrepreneurs. Many of which with OBs and MBs and international people from Silicon Valley and Bob Ados and all sorts. And these people are now personal friends. So I consult with them on ideas they've got or strategies I have. And in fact, next week I'm meeting 15 of them for a dinner in London. So we have a little network of people. And so there's this kind of halo effect around the brand. It engages with people. I've had people who come on the podcast recommend me to people. And it's a way of creating conversation and a rooted in genuine value. And because it starts on that premise, people absolutely a hundred percent believe my business is great, which it, by the way, is. And so it's a much more fluid way of getting people into my funnel.
Jim James 1:Dan, the podcast is great. You know, I've obviously started this podcast as well and really enjoying the benefits of that, but not everyone is comfortable with this as a social object and creating something. What's been your view or experience of social objects that may be collaborative? So someone that doesn't want to start a whole another, another event or another podcast. Can you give us some insights onto social objects that, as I say, maybe a shared experience with maybe partners or other industry players that someone could almost kind of get some experience of creating or co-creating platforms?
Dan Kirby:Yeah, I think where I'd go back to is go to yourself and go inside, and think like, "What's genuinely authentic to me?" Okay. Because what you don't want to do is set up a podcast if you hate public speaking. You know, you just can't. It's not, that's not great. What's true to you, and also, what's your unique ability, to coin a phrase from Dan Sullivan, that sort of entrepreneurial coach, your unique ability, or what are you uniquely good at? And then maybe partner with people who've got other skills who maybe are good on camera or on a stage. And maybe you can provide insight in different ways and think creatively. Think laterally. I mean, I was literally dressed as a wrestler on stage, on camera and as a direct result, one was named as a "Digital Ambassador" for the UK by the British Interactive Media Association in their hall of fame. I completely committed career suicide on multiple levels by doing what I was doing, you know. But what I did, it was, I mean, I have a propensity for getting, doing fancy dress or whatever. The point is, lateral creative moves are where it's at. I think, you know, on people not doing in your industry - what's an abnormal in your industry that creates difference, and then you are noticeable coming back to the theme of this podcast, because you're not doing the same old stuff that everybody else's, alright? So, if you think about the Tech Off, even though ultimately it was misaligned with my business over time, the root of it was not trying to do what everybody else did. And then creating a concept that was different. It could have fallen on its face, and probably should have done in many ways, but it didn't. And partly because people fell in love with it, because it was a bit crazy. I didn't need everyone to love it. I needed some people to love it, and some people could be not bothered. In fact, some people hated it. And we had a very interesting write-up in Gizmoto Magazine. This guy, who completely missed the joke and flagged us off to high heaven. And anyway, it was just so funny. But like, it was, we didn't care because, like, we are doing our thing, engage with our audience, and it was just fun. And actually, the whole thing here, I think, go back to, what's true to you, what's can be fun and engaging, what's creative, and what are people not doing.
Jim James 1:Right. And social objects also could be, for example, even community contributions, right? It could be involved in, for example, education, right? As you say, it's about and extrapolating your purpose into an event or an activity.
Dan Kirby:I think that's a really good, Jim. And the podcast, the purpose I have with the podcast is a genuine social purpose. I'm genuinely trying to help other entrepreneurs to avoid the pitfalls I made and to learn ways to better survive and thrive. Now, there are other ways you can have a social purpose—through charity, or through giving, or through education, or through to helping people. So maybe, again, this is sort of rather than thinking about "Me, me, me, I need people in my funnel," this sort of scarcity thing. Maybe give and pay forward and treat it as an act of service that then, through those relationships which are coming from a very grounded place are much better, right? and so, because people have said to me, "How did you make the podcast so successful?" You know, in it's small way, it's a success. And what they want to know is, how many ads did you run and what platforms did you run them on, right? But we didn't do that. What we did was try and genuinely help people, that's what I've tried to do. In every moment of trying to do this is exercise. And so people can sense that. So they sniff if you're trying to sell them something and they don't want that. People don't want to be sold to, you don't want to be sold to. So if you go back to first principles and go, "Okay, what does my customer want?" Not, "What do I want to sell them?" Alright? So you can actually serve your customers' actual needs, not just try and keep your production facility busy. Then you've got a fighting chance of building a relationship with them on terms that are going to over time be more successful for you.
Jim James 1:Dan, you know, this is fantastic and thanks for introducing the concept of social objects. And I am going to ask you in about another object, just briefly. Because I know you had a business back in the day about Sonic branding. We've only got a minute and a half left, but I'd love for you to just touch on sonic branding because I think it's an underexplored, underutilised part of someone's strategy if you're getting noticed. Maybe a quick takeaway, quick introduction to how people can use audio or sound as part of their getting noticed strategy.
Dan Kirby:Yeah, absolutely. And we're on a podcast now, which may be being listened to on audio, and of course, your interface to that content is the sound. So back in 2003, well, 2001 actually, I set up a visual branding agency, which I sold eventually in 2009. But we had a client ask us, "Can you do an audio logo?" Because we have a visual logo which we're working on their branding. And it turned out I know a guy who's actually a very, well renowned, pop star. He founded the "Human League band" back in the eighties, and all the seventies, actually in the UK. A guy called Martyn Ware, who's a friend. And so I said, "Martyn, can you help me do a Sonic logo? And we'll follow the process we do for a visual logo, and we'll produce this content." And then, at the time, was working with, or still does actually at a company called "Illustrious" with a, a guy called "Vince Clarke" who had the band "Erasure." So Martin Ware, who set up the Human League and now is touring the US currently, with his band Heaven 17. And Vince Clarke produced some sound logo for us. And the point being is we treated sound and audio strategically, alright? So we treated it as something that should align with your brand and your values, not just the founder likes, I don't know, rock music, so we'll have rock music. And as a result of that, we built a team with another chap called Noel Palace, who was based in Portland, Oregon. And we were the world's first transatlantic sonic branding agency. And we did a lot of work with brands in New York and in London. And we actually got appointed by Dolby to do the global Sonic brand for them. Just then the financial crisis hit, and it didn't happen. This is 2008. So the point being is, as an entrepreneur, how you design your brand is more important now—to think about all aspects of it—visual, physical and audio, and all elements of that in a way that, going back to my point about, how does your customer, what do they want to hear, not what do you want to hear, alright? So don't just whack on, on some heavy rock because you like Iron Maiden. Think about, "Okay, what is the vibe, the essence, the brand you're trying to build? How can the sound serve that? And then make that choice." And again, go, as you would do it for a visual logo, do a mood board, get different snippets of audio, and see what feels right. And then design something appropriate, and there's lots of nowadays and lots of libraries of content that are very cost-effective or you can commission stuff for bespoke, but it's worth considering. Yeah.
Jim James 1:Dan, we've covered so much. You know, I try and keep these shows just down to 20 minutes, but there's so much value. Thank you for talking about social objects and how we can use those as connectors with our communities and our audiences. And I couldn't resist asking a little about sonic branding cause I'm quite fascinated on that. Thank you. If people wanted to find out more about you, Dan Kirby, where can they do that?
Dan Kirby:Well, go and have, check out the podcast. If you're an entrepreneur and you want to avoid some of the pitfalls I fell into and learn from, like, genuinely, authentically, behind the scenes of a very high-profile, very well- respected entrepreneurs. In fact, I interviewed Martyn Ware, from the Human League, about the time he was kicked out of his own band. It was just famously kicked out of his band, the Human League, to create his new band, Heaven 17, back in the eighties. And so if you go to the podcast, check that out, Martyn Ware, we interview him for an hour about, like, "Honey, I blew up the band." So it's called "Honey, I blew up the business," available on all podcast platforms. I'm on LinkedIn as Dan Kirby. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @TheDanKirby. There's only one. Dan Kirby, the T H E Dan Kirby. So see me there. Connect me with there and I'd love to hear what you think of the podcast. I'm genuinely trying to help people, so have a list and see what you think, and let me know if there's any ways I can improve it.
Jim James 1:Dan, you've genuinely helped me and all my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs. And it's The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, and you are obviously a very well-known one. So, thanks to you, Dan, for joining me today on the show.
Dan Kirby:My absolute pleasure.
Jim James 1:So you've been listening to Dan Kirby. Of course, as always, I'll put all his details in the show notes. And if you like the show, please do share it with a fellow entrepreneur because, just like Dan, I'm on a mission really to help fellow entrepreneurs to understand how to get noticed, how to do it right, and maybe avoid some of the pitfalls of doing it wrong. And today, we'll do about social objects. And do share this because you may just help another entrepreneur to keep on communicating.