 Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Engaging Ideas, the Parsons TKO podcast. And today we'll be talking with Kevin Smith as our special guest, and we are going to dive into a very interesting topic on this podcast. We're going to talk about sports, marketing, affinity and community building and how that relates into nonprofit community building and affinity work that you all do out there all the time. So thank you for joining us and please don't forget to subscribe or leave us a review at the end of this episode. So welcome, Kevin. So Kevin is a 30 year sports, media and marketing executive that includes roles and accompanies. He's a founding partner of Leverage Sports and Sponsorship. Currently serving also as adjunct sports business professor, the sales program advisor and instructor and leadership coach with TCU, Christian University here in Fort Worth, Texas. He's a career strategist certified coach as well for pro readiness coaching and he also was part of launching Fox Sports NFL Sunday ticket, which I, of course, am a fan of. I don't know how many people in our audience are, but I have been a subscriber of Sunday ticket for a long time and with all my moves around the country, I've greatly appreciated being able to watch my Philadelphia Eagles wherever I am. So thank you for that, sir. Welcome. Heck, yeah. We have a lot of fans just like you, different markets. It's amazing. You get those loyalties, Eagles commanders. I guess you have there's loyalty there as well, but you know, Cowboys, wherever you go, there's certainly a fan base that'll follow them. It's easier today, but certainly wasn't many years ago. So it was a fun ride. We went on. Well, you have this tremendous run up and this is get you are our first person who's not directly within a nonprofit. I mean, we could consider the university, but coming from this sort of sports marketing world and you and I had a very serendipitous meeting in the rare Texas rain and we were both heading on a morning talk to listen to Sint Marshall, the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, which was a fantastic breakfast conversation. And you generally generously start sharing with me a bit about your class. And it really struck me about the courses you run there and some of the programming you do about how would you build affinity and build community for a team within a local area. And that really struck me is this is a lot of work that has to happen in nonprofits. Like it's never been just about reach. It's always about engagement. How do they once I've got your attention, how do I get you to feel a part of the mission with me? And so I've been really looking forward to this conversation to see how we could bring these two pieces together. But you know, because I know a little bit about it, but the audience doesn't. Can you just tell us a little bit about the class you're running at TCU and the role sports marketing could play in developing communities and how you've sort of put that program together with your students. Yeah, first of all, let's go back. So though that rainy day kind of question your judgment. Why are you following me? You know, you didn't know where I was leading you number one, but number two, obviously we go here sent Marshall, who's the CEO for the Mavericks. And you know, if you're looking for role models in the industry, just leaders, you know, she spent many decades at AT&T and I don't care if you're in sport, you're in nonprofit, you're in again, high tech sent as one of those people that just you gravitate towards. And it was to your point, it was great to spend that time with her just to come together. And sometimes you we get a lot of speakers were very fortunate to see you. Sometimes they really resonate with a lot of audiences and she was one that was just a lot of fun to be a part of. So it was nice to nice to have that. So again, thanks for having me on this one as well. And heck, yeah, we have a sports marketing program is called Sports Entertainment Marketing is the specific class I'm teaching right now. It's one that's been going along. I've been in sport for again, all the years and thank you for the introduction on that. And it's becoming its big business just like anything else. I see so many families and students and everybody coming Hey, sports, sports, sport. And so it's this emotional platform, which I also think cause is in film philanthropic endeavors. It's the same way. What are these emotional platforms that allow us to change behaviors that we do it? And how do we leverage those for the actual intent of it? But also it's it can be a strategy. It can be a tactic in sports is one that ultimately sport is a big business, but also it's a strategy. We started a sports marketing program in the business school at the University of Oregon probably 27 28 years ago. It's called the Warsaw Sports Marketing Program. A friend of mine, Jimmy Warsaw, who was phenomenal within the sports industry, endowed the program, put it in the business school where it belongs because we're talking about something that is it's got to drive business just like Parsons TKO. It's got to what's the business? How are we helping what we're trying to accomplish? It's still got to generate revenues, create value. And for sport, people are saying it take away from this fluffiness to truly something that is tangible and we did it at that time. I set this program up at TCU probably a dozen years ago, same thing where it was, you know, there's just such a demand. I have the Dean call me in and said, Kevin, we've got X number of students walking through our door to come here for admissions to say, why am I going to pay $200,000 to go to the school? He goes a third of those students are asking about sports because I need to solve that problem. So he wanted to start a sport program similar and I said, no, because it's just a saturation. I said, I want to teach students to be great marketers and to be a great marketer, you have to understand just what I said, those emotional platforms, sports, entertainment, philanthropic or cause related activities. And if you can do that again, you get people's attention, you can cut through the clutter in the marketplace because we've got so much content, so much access to everything every day and how do we, where's our attention? What grabs our attention? What holds our attention? What engages us? What builds that affinity? Obviously that we will talk about in depth as we go on with this. So I said, I'll create a sports marketing or sports marketing program, but it's kind of marketing first and sport is a part of it. I take undergraduates and I love that. You know, we get to grad school, it gets a lot of numbers crunching as we, you know, deep dive, but I love these 18, 19, well, maybe not that age, give me the 2021 22 year olds that have had a chance to kind of work through their engagement and going into college and all the things they think they have to go do, let them go do it. And I take the juniors and seniors and we just, we deep dive. How can we leverage this? How can we have some fun with this on that day with the Mavericks that we talked about and sent Marshall. They're looking to play a game. So it's the Dallas Mavericks and it's in a Dallas fourth Metroplex with about eight to nine million people. So it's a larger Metroplex, but it's still different parts of the Metroplex. Right. And on the fourth side, they were looking to play a game, which is where Texas Christian University is at TCU. Well, people again, that have anything to do with Dallas, they're kind of goes on for worth or kind of push it away. So she was going, how can we build something? And I say, she and her team, her marketing team, they're going to play a game in Fort Worth and a preseason game. So it's a lot of fun, but she's going. That's just an event. That's just one singular activity. You may or may not be successful. How do we build engagement with the community? How do we build that word? That affinity, that likeness, they like us that they just, they want to be a part of it. They're going to wear that Mavs Jersey where they feel like it's a part of me. It represents what I stand for. And that was the whole quest for scent. She was speaking, but we took the project on as a class because I've got this particular class. We had 30 students, Tony, and also we've got to their from 14 different states around the country. One of the things about TCU, which I really like, it used to be 75, 80% Texan and now it's about 40%. So we have young men and women from around the country. And so it's just this diversity of thought, a viewpoint. And so just they had their own introduction to Fort Worth and what that stood for Dallas or Texas in general. I've got five young men and women from Atlanta this semester. I haven't had five and 10 years. I don't know why they all came at once, but I said, thank you. You're welcome. But again, they bring their own perspective. So we just got to have good dialogue. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I was gonna say that, that part, yeah, that part is super interesting to me because it's how can the Mavericks and then the class and the way you took it make more than just the event, make it about the team, make it about to be that in the nonprofit space. That happens all the time. They'll throw a gala or they'll be an event or they'll be the online, something they do or even if you think of some of the bigger ones, you know, like a run or walk for life, those things that happen. But yeah, I mean, so how did it happen? So if they're doing just one event, how did they build more of the affinity around it? And I guess before we just keep running with the word affinity throughout the podcast here, I don't know if you've got a definition for us just so here in the audience, we can hear too, but that that feels really resonant to what nonprofits need, which is how do I get you to then take this mission forward to not just show up for this one day? Yeah, affinity can be used on the front end of the conversation or the back end. Sometimes on the front end, we have an affinity for a team, a city. We have a team for Philadelphia has just rabid fans, for example, and there's an affinity towards their teams, the Sixers, the Flyers, you know, the Eagles. They're going to enjoy that. They're going to have it. There's an affinity from the very start. So we leverage that that likeness that wanting to wear the Jersey be a part of something bigger than themselves. And so we can leverage that way and then we got to find ways to have experiences, have interaction, multiple touch points that allow us to kind of deepen that relationship and then ultimately hopefully get an engagement going where they want to be a part of what we're trying to do. So the affinity can happen on the front. They're giving us the benefit of the doubt and we then find give them reasons why they want to engage with us further. And then we build that long-term community or the backside. Again, we're out there just creating the engagement and ultimately they don't know about the Mavericks. Why would I support that team? We're giving them reasons. And so what we might do, Tony, is that one event that we have the game they're going to play in Fort Worth, which is about 45 to 50 miles away from Dallas in their home arena. Say that's a tentpole event and he gets the nonprofit space exactly. We throw things we kind of are gala as we put together. We try to make happen and everyone's got to come together and we're waiting for everything just to be perfect. It can't be. But then how do we, again, book in that with other things that we can do on the front end and the back end? Right. So what the Mavericks did. So we're going to play a game. Our tentpole is say it's in September. We'll be the game. Can we do camps over the summer? You know, come over and do Dallas Mavericks run camps for youth. Can we do a business symposium with the local Rotary Club? Can we do a, you know, they were looking at they have an eSports team. Can we do some kind of activity or events over here or different parts of the Metroplex? So you find ways that you can see that process to it's a buildup. So you're having a chance to engage people throughout. So the time we get to the actual event, we built a pretty good buzz. We built. We know we've got some a return on that and our chances of success will be higher. But also we've touched people along the way that we probably wouldn't get if it's just a standalone event and the same thing in the back end. How do we then take that and build it on the back end? What are those set triggers we have along their journey that a relationship with us? And then from that, again, the friendly at the start or friendly at the back end, we're still looking to build that relationship through engagement through touchpoints through social experiences. All these things that can come together with other like-minded people. And that's kind of where how we use that event and what they were looking for. And so, you know, they're going to measure it. So basically, maybe it's social media traffic. They can determine where that's coming from. Maybe it's merchandise sales. Maybe it's, you know, not necessarily the tickets because if I'm going to am I going to buy tickets to drive 50 miles? I'm probably not. Right. So that's not necessarily a, you know, a good touch point. But what can be? How can we engage this and feel like they're part? So people just, again, for the part or something, they're on the back of their car, their license plate has Dallas Mavericks. They're just becomes this affinity towards this team that they're willing to put their own personal reputation in their own personal brand out there to say, this is an integral part of who I am. I'm a Mavs fan or I'm a nonprofit fan. I believe in the cancer society or whatever it may be. I kind of wear it kind of my badge of honor and that's a little bit out of affinity. And from that, there's got to be some benefits and benefits and value that come from that. But ultimately, that's what we're trying to get them to feel as they engage in this. Yeah. I mean, some of the takeaways I had was right down when you're talking especially in that approach of what they did to come in and find all this rounding pieces within the community for a lot of nonprofits. A lot of times I know there's this sense of they're almost going it alone and like who around them could they partner with that might be tangential like the Rotary Club or these different groups and then as the facilitator of bringing a lot of that together, your brand and your name and your recognition stays there and it's showing you're a part of it and it's giving other people access and avenues. So just for anyone listening, I mean, that's it's really interesting point is like as you're setting up some of these entries into new markets or setting up these events like where else can you leverage partnering that sort of expands maybe even tangentially to where you could have been. I know you also had done some work. So you were the CMO and you launched one of the biggest Street basketball tournaments in the US which is really cool because when you talk to me about it I had heard about it growing up too and I actually went to watch them. I remember going to watch the games when I was younger. If you could tell us a little bit about that and also just the lessons you learned because you were you had one place and then you went to the next community. So like how did you leverage and what did you learn along the way as you kept building and expanding it out because we there are a lot of nonprofits out there that have started smaller and then you know what do they do next? Do they franchise or do they team up with someone else in another city that's already doing it? I know there's a lot of thought about that is how do we do more better, faster, good out there but then also still keep a steady brand but yeah. Tell us all about it. I'm excited about this one. I was actually an event manager for this. This is early in my career. So I wouldn't quite hadn't reached the C level on that and versus some other things that I did. We actually were looking. It was because of a media partner. This was in the Dallas Worth area. So D magazine which is our local lifestyle magazine. We created a three on three basketball tournament called hoop be do and it was basically a fundraiser for Texas Special Olympics. And that was the intent. So it was really promotion. The magazine was looking to be that good community partner. How are they out in the community? Looking for things. Their publisher was pretty innovative with what he was looking to do. We had kind of this ideal playing this street ball putting it together and we just did that first tournament not really knowing who's going to show up and let's just say it caught fire pretty quickly. Wow. And all of a sudden within our year two and three we've got. About 10,000 players. On the streets that we are blocked off. We put up over a hundred basketball goals outside and just had this street festival. So it was an experience. Yeah, we playing basketball but it was just coming down and just a part of the community. What was going on? Ultimately still being a fundraiser for Texas Special Olympics. You know, the challenge was because we had to have if I was going to run a tournament with 10,000 players and let's just say 50 to 60,000 spectators over the over the weekend. You didn't have a lot of volunteers to make that happen. And just like anything else the nonprofit sector it's about engaging people finding ways to get them involved. Well, this was a tough ask because this tournament basically we went it's in it was in June so it was the heat of the summer. So I'm going to put you on asphalt. I'm going to have you judge and referee a game where people maybe get a little heated sometimes. You know, and you're a volunteer and kind of put it together but it just kept growing and growing. We were pretty amazed and eventually said how do we create a kind of a grassroots marketing tour around the country and a number of places. So we we did 19 cities that very like our third year and we did 35 cities that the following year but going into new markets you know, was a difficult one. I so was in Dallas. We did it. I went down to Austin, Texas started one there but instead of making it easy for the operators to pull that off. So I'd be a sports company the nonprofit. What was best for the guest? What was best for the players? We blocked off 5th and 6th Street which are very high-profile streets within Austin and just made it a festival. I then went into Washington, D.C. I blocked off Constitution Ave and ran the tournament there just because you're right next to the Capitol. You got the lawn or the lawn right there. You just got thousands of people that will engage in our partners where pizza and Pepsi they didn't care where they came from but they were wondering over what is this Street Bowl stuff and it was just great fun to pull that off. It was hard as heck because you just like any other event and especially running with minimal resources. You know, you finish at midnight you get a couple hours of sleep you get up and you're back on site four or five in the morning off you go and do it that way and D.C. was was difficult. I moved I drove into town and one of the things Tony you and I have talked about prior is really from a resource perspective the perception that sports have a lot of resources. Overall, they don't players make a lot of money when it's guaranteed. You know, teams can sometimes but it's really about TV driven. The difference between nonprofit and the sports world is basically the media. Everything else the same because sports don't want to pay for anything. You know, they just they are cheap with it and just go forward. They don't have the money because everything's kind of been guaranteed. We've got to guarantee the player the product to service such an amount that everybody else is working on peanuts. So I go into D.C. with one contact who was the marketing manager for the Washington Post and that's it. I had to go put on a tournament so that 10,000 players and 100,000 spectators could show up, make it happen. And you just you're creative just like anything else. So sport is one that I could at least call people. Remember at that time Tom McMillan was a congressman and just you know, you could call people that were the sports related just like any other industry. You know, who are those friendlies that you got to lean on and we did it and but I had to have the media partner. That was if I didn't have the media partner, I couldn't have done anything what we did within a new market because that was kind of the key resource. No matter what we did how would we effectively communicate it with the audiences we needed to communicate it with? Yeah, that's that is I really like a comparison there with the media being the front and the sort of focus on that and the ability to get onto those large channels, right? The one that everyone's going to see. I'm curious too though. I mean, it sounds like with the grassroots movement and going into DC it's like word of mouth might have been a big part of this, you know, and I know a lot of nonprofits count on that too. Like what's your experience with that sort of buzz building word of mouth marketing and yeah, how did that play into creating this and getting it out into the new cities? I think it's it played a lot at that time, Tony and I think it probably plays more now. I mean, think about the ease for which we if you and I go to an event in a local city you know, music festival. I may text you say, buddy, hey, don't do it. It's a pain. You know, parking sucks this work. I mean, just I'm able to walk through it so quickly. It's just if you don't do it well, people are going to know pretty quickly or vice versa. Tony, you've got to get here. Come on. There's good things happening and I think just because of the effective communication. We're empowering people to do that. And if you don't have that, you miss out a lot and I'll use an example in a non-sport example. I actually got out of the business for a short bit just to I guess prove that I could, but I was moving back from Australia to the United States and I didn't want to go back to New York or LA and a friend of mine just happened to be the CEO for P.F. Chang's a restaurant chain and they were launching a small chain called you know, Payway Asian Diner. He goes, they helped me launch this thing. I was going, sports, immediate rice and noodles. He's going, it's building a brand. It's what you do. And I did it and it was just fascinating. I was the only person I got to ask a lot of dumb questions. They tolerated me but I brought a different perspective. Again, how do you a real hospitality entertainment environment? But one of the things I did is go in and all the managers we were kind of measuring ourselves. How are we doing with our engagement of our audiences? So whether you're a sport entity, a restaurant or nonprofit, we're always, we need to have our thumb on the pulse of how are we really doing besides what we think we're doing? What's our objective measures that we're seeing how we're doing? We had the typical surveys one to five, you know, one being horrible, five being you or a rockstar, three being good and four being above average. One of the things I did I immediately cut out threes and fours. I only tracked fives. And I just all the managers is you don't know the industry. You cannot do this. I go, if we're going to get word of mouth, we have to deliver an experience that they're going to go willing to do that. Our highest performing stores equal to or better than and this was we got probably a hundred and twenty hundred twenty five stores this time payway Asian diners, a quick casual Asian place to go. The stores that had that those fives were the highest performing ones because it was me willing to put my reputation on the line. Tony, I got a place I just tried. You need to try it. I'm going to I'm going to take you because it was a five experience for me. It was a four. It's nice. I'm not going to say anything to you unless you bring it up. You may ask me, yeah, I tried that. It was pretty good. But if it's a five, I become your avid fan that rabid fan that it is. I'm going to that word of mouth has substance at that time. And our stores, we didn't advertise. We just we spent the experience when you walk through the door at that time. This is when quick casual was kind of growing a little bit. But I wanted to make you my friend. I wanted to share something that was important to me that I found that I really liked. And so it was word of mouth. And so if we're going to really do that and do it well, we got to make sure we're looking at the right metrics because we just think, oh, they like our cause. Of course, they're going to go and talk about it. Have we given them the talking points to be effective with that communication? Have we seated that? Are they emotionally charged? So when they go have the conversation, the people on the other side just since the, you know, the pride and the joy and being a part of this cause that, yeah, give me a little of that. I want a little of that sauce. And so how do we, you know, just empower those around us? So word of mouth is huge, but it's got to be done well. And too often times, we just assume because we're drinking the Kool-Aid. We think others will quickly as well. And we got to really walk them through that process, get them inside the ropes a little bit and allow them to have that same enthusiasm that we might have for the cause of the mission. Yeah. I really got my head spinning a few things. And then I wanted to have a little more into some of the measurements and tracking that we had a question about to you. But what I wrote down as you were talking at one point is communication is or as the experience, like what we are putting out. I think so often that we're getting messages out and then we're waiting to see the reaction rather than thinking of it as the full experience that they're about to have with us is from the way I am sending that email and the links that I sent them and what I curated for them ahead of time to give them the experience that's going to make them want to keep coming back or the way that they came to my event and what they had there creates the so the actual communication itself not just the event not just the moment of playing basketball not just the moment of the gala where we had a great speaker for you. It's it's everything that went into that is that experience that builds and yeah, I think that might not get its full do or credit and then you know, another thing was my company what we're talking about is we came up with we call it engagement architecture and because the idea was that nonprofits it's not just about attention like you're never going to write a salacious headline just to get a couple clicks because you don't get any money out of that and it would just ruin your brand you know, ruin your brand. Then for us it was okay well if I had attention are you prepared to then start cultivating this new relationship and how I think you had said you know, you were looking at the restaurants that had the five experience because you knew at the five level everyone else would start talking to everybody else about it that goes into you know, we've done a lot of work over the last year and I some of it I think in the nonprofit industry it's just been there's always a lot of changes in CRM systems or email systems or what folks are using and how they're categorizing that segmentation has been hard everybody wants to get the personalization but they're still not even able to segment to say who's been most engaged and if you're most engaged if you're at my four to five level with my nonprofit like, can you send me something different than the other people that are at the one or two you know, so I'm taking a lot of lessons here in the same way and I hope everyone's here and that is that you know, that focus on you have to have something different for the five that's just you know, you want the ones and twos to come because they're buying your meals and it's helping the business grow but they're also not amplifying it in the way so you got to do something a little different for that top those yeah, as you're talking there that's what I was thinking about and then you started talking about some of the the measurements and tracking and you know, we had a question there for you too just about tracking affinity, building and engagement you know, what are some of the signals that you are looking for when you're trying to make an impact and you had you wrote me back and you had said you usually like to do R.O.O. versus R.O.I. for R.O.O.O. being return on objective and I really like that because that to me again really signals and I actually love it because it's it's so fits in with the nonprofit space because it's not necessarily return on investment they're trying to get there trying to get return on objective. So yeah, I'd love to hear about this as well as I think everyone in the audience and you might have given everyone a new frame for their next board board presentation. So what you think about it Tony R.O.I. return on investment it's hard to predict or follow through all the time and it becomes so black and white and what we do with sport with cause. Again, we're an industry that's dealing with emotions but here's a lot of movement and things and how do we just get people engaged and so what does engagement look like? Have they come to two events a month instead of one? Have they made a purchase? Have they had a dialogue with somebody? Did they follow up? What was our push through rate if we did send out something? Did they tell a friend? You know, do they recommend us in that way? And again, you've got to find ways to measure that but those are ways that are they truly engaged and fill a part of this community a sense of belonging. We're all looking for that sense of belonging and are we empowering them to feel good about that because if we do they will be our biggest advocate. And all we have to do is see that process as you go forward. I've looked at it as merchandise sales I've looked at online traffic of ways to engage I've looked at partner involvement if we've been able to engage audiences all of a sudden partners pay attention to that when I say partners it's other like-minded organizations or ones that are footing the bill for and with us. I love that you just you find ways to engage people to give them what they want and so how would we measure that? How would they follow up? And it's really relationship building as you go forward and so what's the relationship and you and I also talked about a book that has come out called, you know, fans have more friends and it's a book written by the senior VP of strategy and innovation at Fox Sports. So basically they're they're betting on billions of dollars they're spending on sports properties. You can't mess up on that. You know, you know, ten dollars it upsets us but you know, ten billion got to make sure we're right. So the the stats better be the metrics behind it. What are they looking at? They wanted to find a way to engage audiences. Now, one thing that sports has that the nonprofit sector does not, which will always be a differentiator is live sports. It's not on demand. I'm not going to watch temple basketball or or the Eagles football. You know, if I already know the score, I may watch some highlights but I'm not going to watch the game. And so it's this tune in value. There's always that live component in our society with we have access to so much content on demand. Sport is still one of those few things that it's live and that's why they're commanding huge rights fees for what they're producing as you go forward. That's the biggest between those the two, if you will. And so how do you know, how do you leverage that and make it viable? We've got to find a way. We got to be better storytellers in the nonprofit sector because we have a lot of the same stories and we don't have the live television opponent that's there that we know there's going to be an instant tune in. Right. That we don't have that opportunity. So we got to find ways to engage people and go forward. But let's let's be smarter with what you know, sport is doing or sometimes we why wouldn't we partner with sports? I got to say, most of the stuff I do have done over the last, you know, couple of decades. Oftentimes, there's always been a non-for-profit component to it. If you look at companies now, they're all, you know, what's our community engagement strategy? What's this, you know, social betterment? What's happening? Everybody's kind of looking for it. I think it's a great time for us to kind of make sure we're, you know, ask the question always. We're the right partners because we just rely on us. We just don't have the resources to do it consistently enough to cut through clutter. We just, it's too hard. So why can't we just leverage other people? And I say people because oftentimes in the past, Tony, it was probably about organizations or the sport world teams. Now it's individuals carry more weight than the teams. A LeBron James has a greater following than the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron James is out drawing the Los Angeles Lakers within his social digital footprint. So if he pushes something out, we know we're getting engagement. So it's a positive. It's also a challenge and you're, then you're dependent on the, the whims, that individual, you know, he or she may say something. You go, ooh, really? Yeah. You got to distance yourself and it's hard to, hard to do. Just like we're seeing now in college athletics, this name, image and likeness now we're seeing college athletes have a chance to be on a platform because people give them the benefit of the doubt whether they deserve it or not sometimes. This past semester, I had a young man, Max Duggan, who was the quarterback of TCU that helped them on that national championship run to get to the game. Just a quality young man. You know, and I did some post on some things and he was just a part of it. But when his name was in it, I had a multiple, probably 10 as far as the impressions and views that I had when he was in it, when it was not. It's just, it makes a difference and we don't know what that tipping point's going to be, but we got to find it every time. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting too, what you're saying. I have, I actually think it's a time for nonprofits to be in more of a leadership role. I feel like there's the industry's always looked as like the second tier to the private sector and the private sector is struggling to how do I build trust or affinity and what's my brand and because people are caring about, you know, are you a good steward to the environment? Are you, what are you doing with your funds? What's your DEI approach? You know, I care about equity and I just don't think the CSO corporate social responsibility groups are the ones that should be leading that. I think the nonprofits have the right and the time and the have spent years working on this that they should kind of step up and be leading and sort of being able to give that back rather than waiting for someone else to say, oh, here's how we could profit or profit or partner with you nonprofit. They can kind of step in. I've been thinking about that a lot. Just the bravery that needs to come from saying, no, we're in a leadership position. Like we get this and y'all in the for-profit sector got to start following on us a little bit because we're not here just to be a halo for you. Please do. I mean, they need and I say they and I say corporate really from a enterprise level Fortune 500 and even the small and medium business which are just huge, you know, a hundred million dollar company still they need humanity to be associated with and oftentimes we can best get that brain to the table through a nonprofit cause or effort because it has to be a part of their equation. I wanted to to dive into the fans have more friends if you tell us a little bit about the study but I do think there is a correlation here with the nonprofit community too. I mean, I get it like if I'm an Eagles fan and I moved to Hawaii and I meet another Eagles family instantly have something to talk about but I think there's something similar in the nonprofit space like I've been a volunteer with the Special Olympics for almost 20 years and when I meet other people to do that, you know, I have an instant affinity and I could talk to them about that too and we both care about it and we're both giving time of money and we've both done it for years and I spread the word right. So it's yeah, how does the yeah, what was the core what really was the core of the study and then how could that apply to nonprofits? I think the question for in my head for a nonprofit is it's it feels very linear a lot of times in communications like I want you Kevin to get my email. Now I'm going to build my engagement you Kevin rather than how many other people is Kevin talking to as well and if Kevin's really up there and the example earlier you're the number five fan well, maybe you're having a great experience telling everybody about it and then you're cultivating that and but that becomes your thing like I don't have to control how many friends you have that's up to you but if I'm giving you something that gives you an affiliation to other people like how can the nonprofits sort of play into that too? Yeah, so the the basis for the fans have more friends again for a television network you're trying to figure how are we engaging all the audiences how are we segmenting them how are we doing the right things what's their usage patterns their viewership are they coming back you know how many hours one of the time slots all those things you start to look to do and it's still growth they're trying to find ways that they can have new categories new areas like betting you know fantasy betting other stuff all these new things that's where they're they're leaning into because it's all about a year they're growing or you're declining in the in the for profit business right and if you're declining your cut what's next so you know they studied as far as who is our who's our audience how do we make it good for them and one of the things they came out with they first of all had to define who are these fans and what what makes them that kind of that return on objective what who's watching games and why how are they engaging in with it and then we say watching as a spectator it's got to be a face-to-face activity as well so you've got your temple cap on so why am I watching temple basketball how do I get involved with that am I going to the games okay that's one metric check have I did I buy the program did I go on ahead of time I look at the the scanner report and did I could listen to the coaches show did I buy my temple you know super nice have I gone to the alumni association have I you know all the things that are just around this and what we what they found in the sports world as these social experiences the more we can have those individuals hasn't an excuse to get together and if they did they found if you were truly a fan what they called high value fan so you were invested in the success of the team and being a part of it if you were that high value fan more friends and so essentially that high value fan and they had three questions I found was pretty interesting I run you know I was like look at him so how many friends do you have from this origin point so things I've done with temple basketball how many fans or friends have I just developed from that how much do you value these friendships so it's got to be a value there's not that acquaintance you know we're acquaintances and we'll continue to do stuff and we'll probably get to that level that you know what is a friend do someone you can count on and do it how do you interact with friends so what do we do how are we not isolated how we're going out and that's how we kind of determine or at least in the study how do they determine one of those fans what qualifies you as a fan what point you get to say you are officially one so the high value fan on average had 35 almost 36 friends the non fan so again good person all things they didn't have a team they followed a league or something they had 20. 1 40% difference and you think about it you can all right well guess that kind of makes some sense but even if you're trying to keep up with individuals we're we're seating the conversation you know Tony I care about you and your wife and your daughter and so I may you know everyone's always hey Tony what's going on you know the weather hit you you know you can do that only so many times it's boring right but if if we're talking Temple basketball we're talking something else did you see that last night was that it's the worst call ever you know we have an excuse to have an exchange and then we may pick it up from there or maybe a text and we call each other no I didn't I want to talk further about that that sucked you know or whatever it may be we have an excuse to have an exchange a dialogue then all of a sudden we have a chance to do that and again then we develop a deeper sense of relationship with each other especially I'm just gonna say guys you know just not quite as vulnerable of opening up as far as what's there between male and female kind of what's our hot buttons men and women as we're in the marketplace sport is one of those that will allow us to have engagement to allow us to have banter will allow us to deepen a relationship to the end of the day we're likely gonna have more friends if we do that and if we do that the study even goes on that then our sense of happiness is better our well-being because we're better community citizens where we're involved we're engaged we're confident and so in our own communities we're now doing more than we probably would because we're not sitting back as an active passive participants we're now active as simple as that you know it can be so it just starts with providing that that touch point which is a sport or a loyalty to an affinity towards a group that fandom they call it the fandom flywheel just one of the things around this fandom and what it means and then the chances that we have to support Temple basketball as our excuse it's my excuse to take my daughter to the game you know she goes dad I don't want to go to the game I know but you know how much I love you know my team XYZ you're gonna go thing to do it because she wants to be a part of your life and it's just it's an opportunity to have an exchange and so from a sport world that's what we do how do we emulate that in the nonprofit sector how do we create these experiences besides again just an event or a nice walk and me sit around we have corporate partners at the end and everyone goes home and doesn't think twice about it we talk a lot about that you know how and you know fundraisers care a lot about that too how do I get somebody from passive to active and I'm just thinking about what could groups do as you're talking and I'm like if I was able to segment if I was tracking the engagement if I really had these measures I probably could create small groups and cohorts of people who might know or not know each other and say hey we're gonna I know y'all are interested in global health issues and especially malaria Nigeria and you've all in different ways have told us this we're about to have a small group conversation with 15 people and one of our experts and I want y'all to join and you're all are going to get a chance introduce yourselves to each other because one of that is I brought y'all together because you were fans but like fans of my nonprofit or the work I'm doing or that cause but now y'all are going to go off and maybe you'll talk to each other and then this has always been a theory of mine with Parsons TKO and a lot of the community building work I did during the pandemic when we couldn't go out and do things I started facilitating these events but I was like I just like to be I like to introduce people because then I could just be a glue in their conversation eventually and they'll remember me rather than like I have to be in front of them all the time but if I can get more people to get to know each other and then they have something in common like that's great I feel like nonprofits could probably benefit from facilitating some of that as well and maybe you know it's it seems very easy when it's like a Ronald McDonald house feels a little harder when you're Brookings and you're putting policy papers out but it seems like the fundamentals if you're tracking it could still be very similar and and getting into the ROO as you put it and I try I love I'm I'm going to tag you into a post after the something then when so I had a one last question before a final final question and you've touched on this a little bit and I wanted to throw it out because I you know I know there's there's probably people in our audience that have been listening and they're like yeah that's great but it's the Dallas Mavericks and I'm like a five person nonprofit so you know how how do I how do I really take any and I hope we've been pulling some of these fundamentals about engagement and activation and and what people could do but you know sports franchises it feels like they have the luxury of larger budgets even though you've been breaking that down for us that that that a lot of times they don't you know but what are some of the key elements in affinity building process that are fundamental no flash needed they're accessible to anyone working in marketing and outreach you know you're you're sitting there and you're this five person nonprofit and you just got that new communications and marketing role like that here's here's some fundamentals to think about as you're building out your program what would you recommend you know I think Tony you probably start with you understand our audience it's marketing nails if we were lucky enough to engage 100 people a thousand people Whatever it is, how would we, you know, which 1,000 would we want it to be? Who would be our best customer, our best advocate, our best donor, our best fan, our best stakeholder, you know, within our cause here? And you gotta know where you're getting to. And I think we get caught up sometimes and feel like we just have to push things. We think that solves problems. And again, it just goes in the land and hey, was that, was that the nonprofit I was listening to? Even with five people, you just, you gotta put some basic stakes in the ground. We believe this to be our most valuable stakeholder. I think nonprofits get a little, or at least my experience, you know, for my own efforts, those that make a donation, we have a tendency to kind of gravitate towards them and there may not always be the best people to spend our time with. It's who's willing to invest in us as a cause, as an effort. Those individuals can touch 10 people, 20 people, 30 people that may be, you know, generate more revenues that one individual ever thought about, we have a tendency to kind of focus on that individual. And I just, how do we do that? So understanding that profile, sport teams in general, they don't have a lot of money. They are, I've said in a lot of meetings and I've been on both sides of the table and basically, oh, that's a good idea. How are you gonna pay for it? Go generate the money. You just, you gotta go, just like me driving into Washington DC to run a three on three basketball tournament. One contact, I didn't have a cell phone at the time because we didn't have that. And you just, you know, you pick it up and go, all right, how do I solve problems? How do I generate the attention, the support? You know, I gotta go get in front of the city. That was a challenging time. This was in Marion Barry's, Marion Barry's time as mayor. And just, it was an interesting dynamic. There was, as this kid knew to, you know, 20 something walking in, hey, look at me. It was fun to kind of figure out, but my heart was in the right place. I knew I'd figured out and we got lucky and we did. But if you're just starting out, so again, understanding that profile, who you are, what you're looking to measure, we think we're doing our cause of benefit. We're actually doing the people that we're communicating with a favor. Again, we want them to have more friends. We want them to feel belonged. I mean, we as human beings are struggling right now because we're isolated for the most part. There's a loneliness. They want to be a part of something. All we're doing is giving them the right cause. So we sometimes think we have to push it. We think it's a monologue when it says it's a discussion. How am I creating a discussion? So let me understand the audience that I want for the right reasons. However, minimal facts we have, we still got to come up with a conclusion. What's the dialogue we want to have? And then again, I think you said earlier, Tony, how do you have, you know, what's the output? Let's assume they say, yes. Oh, what do we do now? What do we have our metrics and our processes in place enough, whether it's five people or 500 people, we can have the best process we possibly can. Because if people are going to invest their time, which is most important than yes, their resources, we got to be good stewards of that time and energy. And we got to prove it straight away. You got to be prepared and show them that we're anticipating to be successful. We're anticipating for them to be, come in and be a part of what we're doing. We're going to make their lives better. We're going to, they're going to have more friends. They're going to have more fulfillment. They're going to have more satisfaction. We're going to enable that. That's the true cause. Now, to get there, we're going to do a lot of tactical things that are transactional, but we're going to transform their lives. And those are the people we're going to, who are the people we think we have a chance to transform their lives? Because we can get three of them, then we get 30 of them, then we get 300 of them. We just got to build our network of folks that believe in what we believe in and that mightiness of that small group will be far better than just the masses. That's a good example in the sport analogy. I'll use a golf analogy, a golfer, Jordan Spieth. At the time he's coming out, playing on the tour. He's the young kid. He got lucky. Of course, he wins the masters. That kind of helps always, but which is the largest tournament in the world. But he had this following, but in comparison, there was a guy named Tiger Woods that was about a multiple three, four, five bigger than Tiger Woods. I mean, and then Jordan Spieth. So they had to figure out, how do we look at the audience and the engagement rates? And so they created a really engagement rate for online visibility. How many posts were then shared, reshared or commented on and things and they were able to go to Under Armour and say, yes, we've got one fifth of Tiger Woods, but here's how we're more engaged than Tiger's audience. All he did is push out stuff and he's just Tiger. We've got an engaged audience. If you get us, we're going to deliver. And they put it together and it worked. And then he went, he grew exponentially bigger at that time, but it just, it took slowing down, solving what a partner would want to say, hey, I'm going to take a chance with somebody that knows her audience that well, that's going to create an engagement and a conversation for me in the marketplace. He's proven that he can, his post, he's engaged. He's not just a token, someone's doing it for him. And that's not anything that goes on Tiger. He was just at that time, he was that person and that people doing things that just, there was not a personality that was done it, but Jordan was. And so it's the same thing. How do we, we find the audience we care about and then how do we engage him in ways? And we talked about it early, is this much their communication style and methods we're demonstrating how we want to have a relationship with them. And if that's just transactional and just a male chimp and we're doing a lot of it, you're not really invested in my wellbeing. I'm not sensing that. Yeah, we did have an episode out here too was about personality and getting personality, your own personality in the workplace but getting personality to messages. I think just where I'm going to sum up some of what we talked about. I mean, yeah, you have to have that personality. People want to engage. They want a human. They don't just want messages at them. I really liked how you phrased it, be good stewards of our time and energy. And that goes back to the other thing that I'm stuck on now from this conversation, which is communication as the experience. Be a good steward of if you are going to send me these emails. What can it equal over time and how can you help me grow without overtime? Yeah, I really appreciate this conversation. It was fantastic. It's everything I hope to be. I hope our audience enjoys it as well. For anyone who's been a regular listener of our show, you know we have built a Spotify channel based off of the answers to the final question that I like to ask all of our guests. And Kevin, I have that for you today as well. So what is your go-to song when you need a boost and why? You know, when you first asked that, I said, you know, my mind goes back to the old school here, earth went in fire. Let me just play, start playing some stuff and some songs from then. But it's interesting. I use music in a different way now. I'm, I'm just gonna say it, I'm very ADHD. You know, when I start going all of a sudden, look at my computer, I've got like 37 tabs open. You know, and the spinning wheel of death is just going. And that's the way my mind is going. So when I kind of just stop and turn on Spotify, I'll slow it down. You know, I'll take something Leon Bridges as a local artist, you know, I'll just put on something that Jack Johnson, it's just something that just kind of takes me, let me escape. Music and entertainment is that same way. It's either you're engaged or it's just an escape. And I've been using it more frequently. I just, my mind starts going, but then it starts overload, overload. Let me just stop and take a, take a breather there. And so that's kind of the, the artist that funny, I was just looking, I just pulled up Spotify to see who I listened to, you know, last night. And those were the two were on there that I just, I stopped and, and took a break and just put them on. Big fan of Leon Bridges too. Got some of Leon on vinyl here at the house. That's, that's pretty cool. Well, thank you for your time. This has been wonderful. I really appreciate it. Yeah. And I'll talk to you next time. And to our audience. I appreciate you. That was wonderful. Thank you. Absolutely. And to our audience, thanks for listening and leave us a review. Give us some thoughts or comments. Love to hear from you. And share with a friend. Thank y'all.