Hey everyone welcome to Social Media Hangout Time but we’re going to be changing that as of today. So I’m going to welcome Terry, Terry’s with me today.
Hey again, how are we?
Good, good! We’re doing great! We, I think today is the day to release our new name. We have been talking about it a little bit here and there but I think because of our discussion today and what the show is going to be about, it’s probably time to release what we’re going to be in and if you’re watching you know it right now because you’ve seen it on the screen, correct?
Kind of like a little giveaway. We should have added the overlay after the big reveal. Kind of like a little reveal now.
But remember some people are listening and so they’re still the curious ones because if they are listening they don’t know, they don’t know.
Let’s not tell, right? I say let’s make them hang out a little bit.
You got to go to YouTube to find out, there you go.
Let’s talk about the weather or something for a minute and just change it up.
Let’s have them guess. There’s one word that staying the same, one word. There’s a hint, there’s a hint!
I wonder what word it would be! If you have to guess which word it was, which word would you guess?
I would have guessed social.
You want to guess social?
Uh-huh.
I can of like hangout.
Oh, see! See, well now we gave away two, we took away two. This is like Math problem or something here.
Why would they keep media, I don’t get it! You think they might have figured out now?
I think they might have. We’ve deducted it down. So we kept the word time but we want to change it to, and this is because we could get into why we did this – Business Growth Time. So it’s Business Growth Time. We have a new logo, we have a new look and everything is going to be changing other than a lot of the same lessons and guests and things like that are going to be very similar. But we’re going to expound on it and make it a little bit different and that’s what our show’s going to be about today, correct?
Yeah, I mean really the conversation started about what is Social Media Hangout Time and really what was the purpose of doing social media hangout time or social media in general? We tried to just knock it off on that lever. We’re, what is it for, what is the purpose? That’s kind of how we came to it, right?
Yeah, yeah. We did a lot of deduction, we tried this, we tried that. We had a lot of discussion about it. And Terry comes from a networking world. He is one of the largest networkers in Detroit. We will talk a little bit more deep on that because I know some people have been listening to the show for a while so they might know my background but they don’t necessarily know your background Terry. And we, we’ve guests so quickly that we haven’t discussed this very much. So we should, you know, it is more than social media but obviously business growth can come from social media, too, correct?
If you’re doing it right, why else would you be going if you’re not doing it for some local business.
Uh-huh, uh-huh. Unless you just want to do it for fun and you’re not a business. But then you’d probably be not be listening to the show either, correct?
Kind of what I’m thinking, right? So we could have gone with Ego Hangout Time, that would have been good.
Exactly. Well Terry backing this up, I want to talk a little bit about your, you have a major project right now. And telling people what, what do you do in Detroit? I know you’re a, know just a ton of people and you have an event coming up. So let’s talk about that a little bit.
Alright. So let’s do the event and then we’ll talk about the background, does that seem reasonable?
Either way.
So the event is called 313DLove. It started actually as a Twitter campaign so I have a pretty strong social media background, as well. It started as a Twitter campaign on March 13 in 2012. 313 March 13. Our area code here in the Detroit area is 313. And literally up until 1993 the entire metropolitan area was 313. You know St. Paul was 763, isn’t that right? Is that the area code in St. Paul?
Some are 763, I’m 651.
You’re 651? Okay. So when I live in Minnesota, we had one area code. We were 612.
612, uh-huh.
No one zip. It was probably that way too for the entire state, really. In Detroit it was 313 up until 1993. If you lived anywhere in southeastern Michigan, you know this is cool, right? You can just go like oh we live right here, you know you just use the hand because it looks like a mitt. So that whole area, the top, south and the center part, all 313. And it was interesting because when they did the area code overlays, they’d separated. The first thing to do was you’re Detroit 313 and then everything around you is no longer 313. Detroit has a history and some of you know of not being the most, let’s call it elevated socio-economic status, how’s that? It’s a little less than that. Oddly enough, the county just north of Detroit, literally they bordered, is the third wealthiest county in the entire country. So when you talk about the sparsity of class, it’s right here. So it was almost something like they put up an artificial line, right? So a demarcation point which we don’t need more of that. We need less of it, we need to break those boundaries down. So anyway it’s a little history lesson. In 2012, Detroit was almost starting to come back. You can get a sense of things were happening. People were excited. So I decided to create this thing with a #313DLove. The idea was very simple – tweet what you love about our city. And what happens subsequently was it caught enough traction, got enough attention that it actually trended worldwide on Twitter, right? And the social media people know, that means that it was the top ten topic on Twitter for that time period.
Neat! Yeah, that’s cool.
Pretty sweet, right? Pretty sweet. So in 2013 we did the same thing. We just did it as a actual Twitter campaign partially because my dad was sick and I knew he was going to pass a little bit soon. And he actually ended up passing away on March 12 of 2013. I’m supposed to be on tv that evening and I was like I’m in the hospital, my dad’s dying. Somebody go cover this. I can’t even, I’m not even going and do that, that’s just dumb. Everybody had their fire out, right?
Sure.
So by 2014, it was a little bit like wide open. I can do whatever I want, wasn’t worried about that. So we had an event last year. We partnered with this gorgeous museum called the Charles Wright Museum of African-American History. And it is the single, largest museum of African-American history in the world. And there’s all kind of installations and displays and this rotunda where you can be in one part of the building and talk and you can be, have someone else 300 feet away and it sounds like you’re talking right to them. The acoustics are wild and it’s just beautiful. So they’re a great partner and decided to work with them again. This year March 15, we’re bringing some really prominent Detroiters that people that have found success in our great city because they love what they do and it shows, right? And we’re going to talk about passion being the driving force . So these buffs are really passionate about the work they do. They do a great job of it and they’re really passionate about our city. So one of the gentlemen’s a gentleman named Dr. Nandi. He’s got a tv show called Ask Dr. Nandi. And he’s got a really strong help biased to it, of course. But he’s really sincere about not going to be promoting products because I get paid, that’s bs. I’m going to be talking about things that I do that are real, that are life-changing. And this guy in the last three weeks, maybe four weeks, he’s been in India, US, down to Florida, he’s in Vegas right now. He was somewhere else in between in Europe somewhere. I mean he’s travelling all over the globe and he’s always talking about Detroit, spreading great, great news from Detroit. I said it a long time ago there was a panel discussion, 2008. Said the rest of the world won’t stop bashing Detroit until we stop bashing first because we have had love-hate relationship. This county that I live in, it’s just a little bit north of Detroit, there’s been a long history. Something that government in Detroit has little bit corrupt and the former mayor has been in prison. They don’t end up in prison if you didn’t do anything wrong.
Yeah.
So there’s been some, there’s been some legitimate reason to have some distrust and some problems between there but all of that has been going away. And if you go down there now the energy’s changed. The amount of building and new construction has going there. They’re changing some of the main thoroughways and railroads, too. There’s change and opportunity and new restaurants and cuisines that’s coming in. And people, literally people, Detroit’s the only major metropolitan areas in our country that is consistently lost residents year after year. The last year was breakthrough. And so there’s a real legitimate change. So the event’s called, we’re going to be connecting people. I’ve mentioned Dr. Nandi, a gentleman named David Farbman’s going to be our emcee. Farbz’s probably the coolest guy I’ve met for all time. He recently wrote a book, it’s a New York Times best seller called The Hunt. He’s an avid outdoors man, hunter. He equates the work he does in the boardroom to being in a tree stump. And I don’t hunt, I’ve never shot anything except for maybe from my mouth a couple of times. But he really zones in on this and it almost makes you want to go hunt. And his analogies are really, really cool. He’s going to be there and there’s this lovely lady Satori Shakoor. She runs this event called The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers. And I’ve gone two or three times. And it’s five different speakers in the course of two hour period speaking from twenty to thirty minutes. You don’t even pay attention to the time. And they’re literally telling the story of their lives. And through each one you’ll laugh, some of them you’ll cry, some of them you’re just furious, I mean because it’s like your most intimate details brought out on story in front of three hundred of your closest friends who you’ve never met before and it’s amazing experience.
Huh, sounds cool!
It is really very cool. It’s a, I wonder if they have something like that in the Twin Cities, like an odd desk?
Not quite the same thing but you know I think it’s so different in Detroit. I mean it’s just like you said, it’s a city that a lot of people have just talk about and it had a lot of hard times. I mean so for you guys to do something on the positive end is such a, it’s positive. And to do it year after year, I think it’s a great thing.
It is and it’s been going bit well received. I don’t know if you can see the showcase, obviously if you’re listening to the podcast you can’t but you know we’ve been really fortunate we’ve got some great organization that’s sponsoring us. The United Way of Southeastern Michigan is one of them so it’s nice to see a charitable organization get behind an event like this. Blue Cross Blue Shield, it’s a great sponsor and great partner of this event. Ray Laethem, the Motor Village has been a client of mine for the past three years, very very cool. Opportunity Detroit which is an organization that actually started kind of encourage people to come down in the city. It’s one of the, it’s not necessarily the Quicken Loans family, it’s the Bedrock family which is what Quicken Loans is part of, so it’s cool. LJPR, what smartest dude I know literally a guy named Leon LaBrecque. The honest pal in LJPR. If you’re interested in Mathematics, in Philosophy and Meta Pyhsics, Leon wrote a book called The Odyssey of Forty Days and it’s the most brilliant trip, mind trip I’ve ever been on. You know, lots of secret geometry. So Leon laBrecque, The Odyssey of Forty Days. And then it’s just cool. My favorite part of this is on film and it hasn’t happened yet. We got a twelve year old boy, young man named Robby Eimers. Robby is twelve. Three years ago, three and a half years ago he was riding downtown with his grandmother and he saw some that didn’t have a house and he just sitting at the side of the road, cold. And Robby said why is that person sitting there? And his grandmother said because they’re homeless. And he said what does that mean? She said they don’t have a place to live. And he said that’s not right. Gee, of course but not much we can do about it. He’d never seen a homeless person on that trip, he saw several homeless people and decided that he wanted to start feeding them. Start giving them blankets. So the next week he made his grandmother take him down, set up a table, brought some peanut butter and brought some bread. But fast forward now, he feeds on average two hundred homeless people every week through his foundation the Eimers Foundation. And they set up and give hot plates and it’s an amazing thing. Sometimes they bring blankets and clothing and socks and jackets and what they have. He has a little sister who, eight or nine, and she brings food and things for the homeless animals that are down there. It’s just the most amazing experience, I cannot wait to hear from this young man.
Cool, twelve years old. Yeah! That’s, that’s, you know, yo don’t see too often. You just don’t.
So excited, I’m so excited. So yeah, my wife has been writing with me on this. And the website 313dlove.com, she basically put the whole thing together by herself which is impressive because she’s never built a website before. Got a couple of friends that did a l little bit of the heavy lifting, like she’s a great webmaster. People are sending their logos, you know, you’ll see Yoga Shelter roll through here at some point in the next couple of minutes. We just got their logo this morning and it’s already on the website. And that’s how she’s been handling it. She’s driving me a little bit nuts, right? Quite probably not half as nuts as I’m driving her on thirty. But it’s cool, we got a great team, it’s going to be a really good day. Oh shoot, the coolest thing 313 on 313, we’re encouraging people around the world to Tweet what they love about the earth. I don’t want to be all Kim Kardashian but our goal is to break Twitter.
Cool, that’s cool! So they need to use the #313dlove
Yes ma’am.
On 313 and then
313 and you can do it anytime during the day, whenever, no particular. During the event we’ll have a break and we’ll have about three hundred people in the room and we will stop, literally, and get your phones and tweet right now and we’ll showing it up on the screen. So we’ll be tracking it. And we trended nationally last year. We didn’t break, we were number two because the car accident at south bay, southwest last year, a big automobile accident. That was a major major part of traffic at that time we were doing it.
You never know what world events will happen exactly at that time, good point.
I know. The problem when you’re trying, and when you’re physically trying to make news, right, because I don’t try to do it very often. But when I do it’s going to be positive. When you try to make news, screwing up and doing something shitty and mean and nasty, and that takes press time.
It does, it does.
I really jack up.
Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of, yeah, it’s sad. That can be a whole topic for another day but yeah, I don’t like the news. I just, I’m not a news watcher because it’s all so negative. So that’s a whole different subject but it’s something that, yeah, and it’s sad because it does overtake the good, a lot of times, so yeah. So let’s help for no accidents on 313, no nothing. Calm, peaceful on 313. Hey can you tell people also that are in the area that might be interested in showing up that day. What do they need to do to get there?
Yeah, that’s great. So, you know, we’ve got Facebook page, facebook.com/313dlove. Our event right, tickets are there. We’re also at 313dlove.com, just write on the website to buy tickets through the site. We’ll probably end up some of the tickets through at the door. Our ticket price, because I think I’m funny are $31.30, right? And my wife was very, very clear that she is not going to be handing the change. So if you go to the door, pick it a bit lower, maybe thirty bucks. Unlike, normally they charge more at the door which make it forty.
Yeah, yeah.
So we’ll figure that out in minute. Just be there. And then we’re doing a march like around the museum. It’s about a mile track and I’m still not really sure why we’re doing it. So, no, we’re doing it to bring awareness to what’s going on, right? We’re trying very hard to get the city to proclaim this as a national holiday. Proclaim it as Detroit Day on March 13, so that’s one of the big cool things.