Brad Besancon

How Social Media Amplifies Online Passion For The Ringbrothers Muscle Cars

Passion about Hot Rods, Muscle Cars, and all things automotive overflows at SEMA 2017 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Robert Riggs talks to Jim Ring of the Ringbrothers about the custom muscle cars they unveiled and how it sets social media on fire for their business.

Transcript

[Mike Ring of The Ringbrothers Talks Muscle Cars & Hot Rods at SEMA 2017] [03:01]

Robert Riggs: Hi, I’m Robert Riggs with Clarity and we’re here at SEMA 2017 with Mike Ring, the older half of The Ringbrothers.

Mike Ring: That’s correct.

Robert: Which I think I best describe as the Michelangelos of car customizing.

Mike: Thank you.

Robert: So let me talk to you about passion. What is the passion? You go through here, there’s tens of thousands of people in here. What is that passion?

Mike: I think you grew up with it or you’re influenced by something or someone at a very young age, and for us, it was just wanting to get out of a small town and trying to find a way to get out of there, and it was amazing.

Robert: So behind me is what I’d call an old school restoration truck customization and we baby boomers, we love that, so what was it in that car that you were doing it for yourself that knew you wanted to do it?

Mike: We’ve done so many cars and we really hadn’t been known for doing any trucks at all, and what’s nice about it is we didn’t have to get super crazy and it wasn’t to make a statement or anything, it’s just about making a cool little truck for the shop, so using the original chassis to start with was not normal for us and it was just fun, it was just fun.

Robert: So you got a new wave coming up of Millennials.

Mike: Yes.

Robert: What’s their passion and do you see them – do you see Millennials some day as older adults being your clients?

Mike: I think the Millennials are going to demand a whole different type of vehicle. I hope they do. I’m really nervous that they will just take Uber everywhere and not even want a vehicle anymore. I don’t know where it’s going but I hope they do, but I think the technology with these kids and what they’re going to want, I mean, we’re seeing it the young guys that are working for us to be able to model things like I say in CAD, and create a car maybe that’s not even been out there – it’s their dream, and really, with technology today, there’s shops like ours that can build anything.

Robert: So you see basically scratch customized cars?

Mike: Scratch-built cars, yes, I really do, I think people that have the money are going to – they have a dream and they’re going to want to be able to create a – and a lot of the young people today could probably design their own car in some way that could bring to somebody and pull it off.

Robert: So do you ever just pinch yourself and say, “Wow, how did this happen?”

Mike: Yes, I mean, I come from a town of 600 and just think that people know who you are around the world sometimes. It’s pretty crazy.

Robert: So did you ever tried to race it?

Mike: No, not yet. I’m just kind of the one that is to do the bodywork and paint. My brother loves to just tear them up and chip them up, and he doesn’t care. I get a little bit upset with that but after seeing it done, the pressure is off.

Robert: Okay, well, hey, I appreciate you talking to us and understanding passion and the Millennials.

Mike: Yes, thanks.

Robert: Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Mike: Very much.

How Social Media Souped Up The Ringbrothers Hot Rod Business

by Brad Besancon

Brad Besancon talks to Mike Ring of the Ringbrothers at SEMA 2017 about how Facebook marketing expanded their custom car business to an international market. If these Baby Boomer hot rod builders use social media, don’t you think it’s about time you started?

Transcript

Brad Besancon: Hello, everyone. It’s Brad with Clarity again and we have the honor of sitting here with Mr. Ring of Ring Brothers and we are going to talk a little bit about social media. We’re not going to talk too much about cars which is kind of odd for you, isn’t it?

Mike Ring: It is, yes. It’s the end of 2017, same line, it’s been all cars.

Brad: So yesterday, we were in a Hot Rod Association panel with you and listened to you, and you indicated how important social has become to your business in kind of bringing on the passion of the next generation. Tell me a little bit about when you guys realized that social should be a part of kind of your overall business model.

Mike: Well, I got to tell you, we were pretty late in the game. I mean social has been around – we didn’t pick up on it until probably five years ago, how important it was and I’ll tell you, it was truly important. I mean, it got us to be able to reach out and find people and have people find us that we’d never have the opportunity to get. That includes all over the world. I mean, we’ve got customers from London, England. We’ve got a customer from Russia. You can’t get that without social media.

Brad: Right, and it just helps you spread your message and what you’re doing, and your passion for cars because you guys are very unique in what you do. You guys talked about that yesterday, about how it’s your kind of model and what you do, so you realized that, and then what did you start doing? Did you just jump in there full-fledged or did you like, “Hey, what do we do with this stuff?”

Mike: It was honestly way over our head. We had to hire a company to do it. Our sales went up, everything about it was good. Today, I don’t know how you could be without it.

Brad: Yes, and so let’s talk about that. So here we are, it’s not a typical business. We heard that also in the seminar, “I don’t use social, I don’t use social,” and then here’s The Ringbrothers using socials. How has it influenced business from a standpoint – because you guys do a lot – you don’t just build cars. You do parts and some other things.

Mike: We also do collision work.

Brad: So how has that affected your overall business?

Mike: It’s tremendously, like I said, you could get customers that you could never get without it and it also allows people, to really show them what you’re doing. The followers we have right now, I mean, I don’t even know the exact numbers, a couple hundred thousand Facebook, which that’s a couple hundred thousand people. That’s a lot of audience for just kind of starting out into this.

Brad: Yes, and you never know which one is going to pick up the phone and call you and say, “Hey, man, I really liked what you did. Can you do that for me?” So let’s talk about what you are doing. How do you use, let’s say Facebook or social media now in kind of keeping that connection with your customers and your fan base?

Mike: I think just showing everybody what we’re doing from start to finish is a big part of that. It’s one thing to show somebody a final product but it gets them engaged when you’re showing them little pieces here and making them wait for the final, the final ending.

Brad: It makes them a part of it, right?

Mike: It does, it brings them around, makes them part of the build, part of the process, and I think it’s exciting.

Brad: Yes, I think it is too, and they are killing it on social so if you guys are into cars and like custom builds, get over here and watch these guys. They are doing a great job. Hey, thanks for your time.

Mike: You’re welcome.

Brad: I really appreciate it.

Mike: Thank you so much.

Brad: Congratulations on everything.

Mike: I appreciate that.

Brad: Alright.

Are You A Polymath Like Steve Jobs? Clarity Creativity Series Part 3

by Brad Besancon

Transcript

Are You a Polymath Like Steve Jobs? It’s a Key Attribute of a Creative Person] [03:41]

Dr. Rodney Hill: Steve Jobs was a polymath, Einstein was a polymath. It’s a person that likes lots of different things. Music, Art, Science, Athletics, it could be a whole range of things.

Robert Riggs: An inquisitive person?

Dr. Hill: Very – curiosity.

Brad Besancon: I think I might be a polymath.

Dr. Hill: Yes.

Brad: That makes me feel good.

Dr. Hill: Yes, yes. Polymaths essentially come up with all the ideas because they don’t just –

Brad: Because there is not one thing they’re trying to focus on, right? They can just take in a lot.

Dr. Hill: No one they have just blinders on.

Brad: Yes.

Robert: So I mean, Brad is going to through takeaways with you in a minute but so is it important that if I want to have any chance of getting the flow on these other things, that I really ought to start thinking, just become more inquisitive and questioning things.

Dr. Hill: Yes. You need to question things but if you’re sitting at the environment, you need to look at you in particular, what sets you off? Einstein did it for 15 minutes. He would be working on something and then he would just zone for 15 minutes and everybody thought, “Oh, the old fool,” they’re nodding off and then he would come back, and he would write down all of the things that he thought of during the flow.

Brad: Interesting.

Dr. Hill: So depending on each person, has to find what sets him off. You’ve got to figure out who the people are doing the inventing, what helps them get into flow, what keeps them creative.

Brad: I mean, I think those are the key takeaways, right? Creative environment, so if you’re an employer, please think through that for your employees, especially if you have a strategic online marketing plan or social is a very part of your business – which it should be – then you need to remember that, right? And when they come to you and say, “Man, I really like a couple of days at home,” this came from reports available, you could go see how they produce more and make more money for you. If you are an employee, you need to be sure to try to figure out what your flow is, whether that’s the walk in the park or kind of zoning out, or shoot, I guess for some people it’s a nap.

Dr. Hill: It is.

Brad: Take a nap and come back and get refreshed and something. Listen to music, whatever that is.

Dr. Hill: Sometimes, you can be in a super loud environment, generally without words, like a jazz band in New Orleans, and you don’t listen to anything they’re saying but what it does, it provides this huge sound barrier of an aloneness so you can come up with a zillion ideas.

Brad: So go to a concert. Have a drink.

Dr. Hill: Just flow out while you’re in the concert.

Brad: Right, really interesting.

Robert: Okay, are you feeling the flow? We are. Rodney Hill, Dr. Rodney Hill, futurist, Texas A&M. We really appreciate you talking to us.

Brad: We really appreciate your time.

Dr. Hill: Sure, sure.

Robert: I think for a lot of people are going to walk into their balls this week, so unusual [02:56].

Brad: With those Clarity guys.

Robert: Alright, that’s – go ahead.

Dr. Hill: But one of the things too, if somebody’s looking at, we’re going to have to add more space for building at the building, or they could have a whole series of employees that are working at home. You don’t have to build a new building, you don’t have to worry about parking lot traffic, a whole range of things.

Brad: There you have it, guys.

Dr. Hill: As a matter of fact, AT&T has 40% working at home.

Robert: Wow.

Dr. Hill: Yes.

Robert: Well, there it is, the Clarity clip of the week, part 3. ending on creativity.

Brad: And you can learn it.

Robert: Yes.

Brad: Have a good one, guys.

How To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing – Creativity Series Part 2

by Brad Besancon

Watch Dr. Rodney Hill, Futurist Texas A&M University, explain how to get into a creative mood.

Transcript

Brad Besancon: You truly believe that creativity can be taught and there’s a lot of people–

Rodney Hill: They’re set up. People are creative and what you’re doing is you’re setting the environment for them to get into themselves.

Brad: So it’s basically that everybody has kind of a core of creativity within their brain but because they never set up the right environment…

Rodney: Right, right. Nobody’s ever going to do it.

Brad: Nobody’s ever going to do it. So let’s talk about, what is that environment? What is a good environment? I mean, you see Google with the sleep pods, if they’re with a massage therapist or something.

Robert Riggs: But the stereotype, typical thing is, I’m in the shower and voila, here it comes. So what are these environments?

Rodney: Where nobody can interrupt you, nobody is coming in, you’re in isolation and you can think.

Robert: Is it free think though, you’re not actually really thinking about the problem?

Rodney: Right. It’s free thinking and you have the associations like going to sleep at night. Your hemispheres just sort of makes, everything comes up. I think, was it Scott Fitzgerald, what makes a really creative genius is a mind that can hold two just position of ideas at the same time without you accept the both of them.

Brad: Makes sense

Rodney: Then you figure out maybe how to blend them up eventually. Minota has soundproof chambers for their scientists. When you’re coming up with an idea and you go into a set of flow, the last thing you want is somebody to come and walk up behind you, slap you on the shoulder and say, “What about 99 flip ball?” You’re broken out of it, so like if you’re in a place where there’s a lot of people, if you put on earmuffs even though they don’t have to be wired to anything; the wire could be there but no sound, the last one that they will pick on as they come in the room is the person that has the earbuds own.

Brad: They don’t want to feel like they disturbing them, right?

Rodney: Yes. The students studied late at night by themselves because nobody will bother them.

Brad: Nobody will bother them.

Robert: But Rodney, it seems to me that we live in the absolute worst environment now for not getting interrupted.

Rodney: Right, we do. Right.

Robert: With the smartphone, and so how do you turn it off? How do you isolate? How do you let stuff percolate?

Rodney: You just have to turn it off. [laughing]

Brad: [laughing] It’s amazing. It does have an off button or do not disturb but you just choose not to do that.

Rodney: That’s right. But if you can just get away from that, you’re way better off.

Robert: So you should kind of try to apply itself to the problem and then step back, go do something else and not expect that, oh, this will come up right now?

Rodney: Right, and don’t define the problem. You don’t want to because it’s like the coffee cup; if you say coffee, they’re going to design coffee cups, so like the good example is 3M and post-it notes which it was never designed to be post-it notes.

Brad: That’s right

Rodney: Somebody said, “Hey, we can use this for this and this,” and they probably sold a zillion. 3M has a policy that I think every four years, a fifth of all the products have to be new.

Brad: That’s brilliant.

Rodney: So they have to invent and come up with new products, plus they require that all of their employees bill 10% of their time to daydreaming.

Brad: That’s brilliant.

Rodney: How long a process is that? Is it a few minutes to get into that space? Is it, I got to leave my desk, go outside? What?

Rodney: It depends on the person. Samuel Adams used a purring cat, a cup of tea, and he would do that, and then it would pop into his head. I don’t get blocked anymore but if I did and I was trying to come up with something, I would listen to some 18th century music and drink five cups of tea as I wander around the house, and then I can just sit down and come up. Mozart would take long walks in the woods and then maybe listening to the Babbling Brueck and see 50 different shades of green coming through a tree. He could feel the breeze, smell the odors, then he could sit down and actually write a piece when he got back. Beethoven had to hammer around for months to come up with a piece, so it’s different–

Brad: It all depends on the individual. I mean, I know with me, it’s a whiteboard. I get in front of a whiteboard and just start drawing stuff out, whether it’s graphically or whether it’s word maps or outlines, or whatever and you just get out there and we just start, Robert and I just start talking about stuff and here it comes.

Robert: Back in writing and journalism, and television, what I thought would kill you is if you just sat and thought about it, that you just need to start and you got that first draft, and then I would walk away from the document, you walk away from the first draft and then have a different view when you came back. Is that..?

Rodney: Yes, sure. The more you can distance yourself and see things in a new eye.

Brad: Well, I think the other thing we learned too in business and talking to our clients is you always have to be ready, not necessarily in your full-fledged flow but you never know when that’s going to pop in your mind, so be ready. I had a professor one time tell me, because sometimes, my brain starts going in the middle of the night, is put a notebook and a piece of paper, a pen and paper beside and just write down whatever it is that’s got your mind going, so things like that because you never know. And then we’re in social media and we’re working with clients and they’re trying to tell their story, you never know when that moment of your story’s going to occur either so you got to be kind of ready.

Robert: Alright, so do you want to know more? Do you want a part 3? Give us a teaser, where do we go next on this?

Rodney: Who knows? Well, like about writing, Kipling used to write with blue ink and then his assistant ran out of it, and ran and got him some black ink and he goes going like, [groans] but he had a zigging idea so he started writing, and a thousand ideas came out, and he decided he wouldn’t write again unless he had black ink. It was like a post-it [00:06:21] suggestion.

Robert: Okay, hold that thought, black ink.

Brad: Go grab your black pens.

Robert: Part 3, coming up.

Tips To Break Your Creative Block – Creativity Series Part 1

by Brad Besancon

Watch Dr. Rodney Hill, the Futurist for Texas A&M University, explain how to get into a creative “flow” when you just can’t seem to come up with any new ideas.

Transcript

Robert Riggs: Hi, we’re Robert and Brad, and we’re here with the Clarity clip of the week and with Dr. Rodney Hill, the futurist at Texas A&M University to talk creativity. Now, Rodney, a lot of people think that not everybody can be creative but you’ve got a process you take your students through where you get there.

Rodney Hill: I think everyone can be creative. It’s just through the school systems, they’re not exposed to creativity. In fact, it clips their wings most of the time. If they try to be an original or creative, or come up with unusual answers, they’re slapped down; they expect students to reproduce knowledge. You memorize this, you feed it back on a test, but they don’t ask them to ever create anything. So that’s what’s happened to kids, so I have to show them how to get into their creative mode, and a lot of people call it “flow.” Essentially, when you’re in flow, both hemispheres lock into the frontal lobe and it’s referred to as optimum behavior.

Brad Besancon: One of the things we’ve noticed is, especially with our clients, is they have no idea how to get into the flow. Is there some tips, maybe three or four tips where, did you take your students through, it kind of gets them to flow part 1 or flow 1.0?

Rodney: Sure.

Brad: What are some of those?

Rodney: Well, getting into the first day, I’ll pass out red apples to a hundred in the class, and they’re all sitting there with a red apple wondering.

Robert: [laughing] They’re supposed to give that to you.

Rodney: Yes. So I have them either lean back they can lay down on the floor, in the aisles, whatever they want to do, and then I take them to an exercise that was written by the associate dean of engineering out of Stanford. Stanford requires 2-3 hour classes on creativity to graduate any engineering curriculum.

Brad: Interesting.

Rodney: And so anyhow, they go through a whole range of what it’s like to eat an apple. About a minute into it, they have to bite into the apple, and we imagine the apple, the sunlight going in this apple’s form, the way the skin reflects the pattern of [00:02:16], streaks and dots, not just one color. But anyhow, it goes everything, from going into the ground, coming up the sap, flowing into the blossoms, etc. but essentially, they are imagining, and what’s really interesting, this is the first time and they’re just sort of like in a daze when they get out of it. Now, the second class period, I use an exercise from the Olympic Training Center which is progressive relaxation exercise where you flex your hand and your shoulders, you go through a whole range of things, and then you release it so it gets them into that idea but a lot of them all of a sudden realize that when they are creative, they go through a series of things.

Brad: So if you had to tell a business that looks at Robert and I and says, “Guys, I’m on a mental block. I’ve been doing this for two years on social media. We’re writing blogs–

Robert: Two weeks.

Brad: Or two weeks. [laughing]

Robert: We walk in with an apple.

Brad: Yes, should we bring an apple? What would you say for a company that says, “I’ve got this team of people and we just seem to be regurgitating and nothing new’s coming out,” what are some real specific steps that they can do?

Rodney: Oh, okay. There’s an exercise that you can take them through. One is, pass out, get about halfway through the second lecture on creativity and say, “Okay, stop. We’re having a pop quiz,” and they will all go gasp, “But you said it was all going to be producing.”

Brad: [laughing] “This is a creative class, we don’t have tests.”

Rodney: And so I hand them out a sheet which is down here, it’s the chemical formula for coffee and it goes through a whole series of things. You have to design this container that will keep it at X degrees centigrade and you’ll have a packet in your hand, and you have to be able to get to another room and open the door holding this device. Essentially, just before that, I told them about trigger words, that if you’re listening to music, you never listen to music with words in it because if you’re trying to come up with something creative, you’re fighting off those words.

Brad: Yes, your [00:04:30] trying to sing the song.

Rodney: [00:04:30] image. So anyhow, they come up with these fabulous Rube Goldberg contraptions that have a bunch of them, put them up on the whiteboard, and they’re like, the really–

Brad: They have no idea where it came from.

Rodney: No.

Brad: Yes.

Rodney: But they’re wonderful. But then I flip in and show them slides of, what if I told you this was coffee? They would have come up with coffee cups, coffee mugs; they wouldn’t have come up with–

Brad: This is a chemical liquid.

Rodney: Yes, an accordion thing that lifts to the served saucer on a belt, and there is a range of things. That’s what most businesses are doing. They tell the people doing the creative thing: “Okay, come up with a [clicks tongue].”

Brad: Exactly. They tee it up too much and say the same free flow.

Robert: Okay, we’ve been talking with Rodney Hill, the futurist at Texas A&M University about getting into the flow for creativity. Now, in part 2, we’re going to come back and talk about some other specific steps of, how do you get into the flow?