Human Interest Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Clarity Digital Marketing Dallas Fort Worth

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.

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?