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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, of all the podcasts I’ve hosted, this one is my favorite, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story about Chris Brogan from Podcast Movement 2014.

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What I Learned Yesterday:
I met Chris Brogan over the weekend. Who is Chris Brogan? Chris is a New York Times bestselling author of 6 books about social media, achieving goals, building influence, entrepreneurship, and other similar topics. He’s a frequent keynote speaker at conferences about those topics and he’s consulted for companies like Microsoft, Disney, Coke, Google, and a bunch of others. To folks like you and me, he’s kind of a big deal. He at least has a pretty impressive resume.

Chris was invited to be the opening keynote speaker at Podcast Movement. He gave a very interesting and humorous presentation about the way podcasters should treat listeners. After his keynote was over, he hung out the rest of the day. He was part of another panel later in the day, but other than the time he was on that panel, Chris was out mingling with all of us with less impressive resumes.

He didn’t go back to his hotel room and hide. He didn’t have a group of people around him to keep people away. No, it was just the opposite. He took time to meet every person, sign every book, hear every story, accept every business card, and shake every hand that was offered to him.

I’m not the type of person who typically gets enamored with celebrity. That’s not to say that I don’t get nervous when I get the opportunity to interview a celebrity. I do. But that has more to do with the anticipation of the interview. I get nervous no matter who the person is in those situations. I even get nervous when I’m the one being interviewed.

Since I don’t get enamored with celebrity, I don’t go out of my way to speak to them unless I have a legitimate reason to. In Chris’ case, I had a legitimate reason.

Two weeks ago I produced episode 25 of Rise of the Entrepreneur for my friend Zac Johnson. In that episode, Zac interviewed his friend, Chris Brogan. I love getting to produce Zac’s podcast because I find his guests so interesting. I found his interview with Chris to be really inspiring. Chris spoke about his new book, “The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth” and how he has learned from past and recent failures. In the interview, Chris even spoke about his body transformation and weight loss.

Now back to Podcast Movement. I wanted to tell Chris about how much I enjoyed his keynote and his interview with Zac. At one point I came out into the common area and Chris was talking to a couple of people. I wasn’t sure if they were people with him or just average joes like me. After a minute or so, another couple approached Chris. The first couple did the polite thing and moved on so the new couple could have their moment with Chris.

I now realized that Chris was just chatting with folks so I moved into the “I want to be next” zone. I didn’t get too close, because I didn’t want the couple to feel rushed, but I got close enough so that if anyone came up to him, they would know I was next in line. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later a guy approached. At first he kind of stayed at a respectable distance like I was, but he was on the opposite side of Chris as me.

A minute later the couple started their goodbye. The guy on the opposite side from me looked me in the eye and then moved right on in to Chris. He then asked Chris for an interview (they may have had it pre-arranged) and then he took Chris off to a side hallway. I was left all by myself.

I didn’t really blame Chris. I had been purposefully standing in a spot where he may not have seen me. Again, I didn’t want him to rush with the other folks. I just wanted to be next, whenever that time came. However, the other guy CLEARLY saw me. He moved in in spite of me. Even if he did have a pre arranged interview with Chris, he should have let me speak to Chris and waited until it was his turn.

Well, what can you do?

A few hours passed and I sat in on some great sessions. At one point I decided that while everyone was in sessions, I would try and go chat with Chris again. This time I had better luck. As I approached him he excused himself from the person he was speaking to and he spoke to me. Apparently he had noticed what the other guy did. The first thing he did was apologize. He never mentioned the other guy, he just said that he knew I had been waiting to speak to him earlier and he was sorry that it didn’t work out. He must have apologized at least 3 times. As far as I was concerned, he had nothing to apologize about.

I told Chris how much I enjoyed his keynote and his interview with Zac. He asked me about my story and I shared a bit of it with him. He got really excited and told me that he wrote “Freaks” for people just like me; people who didn’t fit in with the corporate world and similar places. He signed my copy of his book, and even told me he had a referral to pass my way. How cool is that!

Chris continued to impress me even after that. Later that night there was a Podcast Movement party at the House of Blues. Several busses had been hired to shuttle everyone from the hotel to the House of Blues. I don’t know how many busses were ahead of the one I jumped on but Chris was on that bus. As I walked past him to find a seat he said hello to me and called me by name. I wasn’t wearing my conference name badge.

Yesterday I sent Chris an email to thank him for being so kind and approachable. I again told him how much I enjoyed his keynote and that I even used a very memorable part of his keynote as fodder for a joke I used in my presentation.

Less than 30 minutes later Chris emailed me back. He mentioned a couple of references to Fringe. I never told Chris about Fringe. That means that he must have checked out my website or read my Twitter bio. Either way, he took time to learn something about me so that he could make a connection. We already had a connection but he chose to take it a step further. We went on to trade a few more emails about some other sci-fi shows that we enjoy.

Here’s what I learned.

People are what matter most and Chris gets that. No matter where we think we are in life, no matter how far we think we’ve made it, or how big we think we are, we need people. I don’t mean that we need people so that we can use them, manipulate them, or have them around us so we can feel important. I mean that we need them because we all need each other. We get no where without each other and we are nothing without each other.

Chris was not the only person at Podcast Movement that displayed this humble and approachable attitude. All of the keynote speakers were this way. Cliff Ravenscraft, Jamie Tardy, Evo Terra, and Srini Rao were all just one of the crowd and chatted with everyone.

So that’s our lesson for today. We must never distance ourselves from others, no matter the reason. We need each other. Like an ember that grows cold when it falls away from the fire, we get our life, we burn our brightest, we exhibit our best when we humbly and graciously enwrap ourselves in community.

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

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