Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer. Let me tell you about two amazing sponsors who make the show possible.

Shark 0:25
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Shark 1:11
Thank you to Invoca and Drips! And now back to the show.

Shark 1:14
If you had a viral video, what would you do with it? It's such a goal for so many people in so many brands 15 years ago, it would have been a newsworthy story, but now there are new viral videos every day. But if you did have that moment, then how would it define you? What would your plan be to capitalize on it? After that moment ends? Would it just be a moment for you? Or would you be able to create a movement? And will it be enough to create a memory that explains your brand personal or corporate and answers the question why you. Judson Laippley is a keynote speaker MC author in the world's first YouTube celebrity with his hilarious viral video of him dancing and an evolution of dance mix that explains how life is changed. And on this episode, we'll discuss the first ever viral video on YouTube having a plan after that viral moment coming up with your own stick to help people remember answering the why you question creating a movement versus a moment getting a master's degree quantifiably measuring your social media, what mash and taters means to people, the stories of the guardians, and a men's flat track roller derby team, Ellen versus Oprah, Katy Perry, video apps for dancing and a lot, lot more. So let's tune into the world's first YouTube celebrity with an evolutionary dancing shark, that's me, on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Shark 2:32
Judson thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective. Tell us a little bit about your background, your career to date.

Judson Laipply 2:38
Sure. So I my very first paid speech was back in 1998. When I was in college, I spent a lot of time during high school working with student organizations, and I was a student council kid. So I went to conferences and summer camps. And I ran for the State Board my junior slash senior high school and was fortunate to be elected as the State President, my senior year. So I did a lot of speaking, I participated in the rotary four way test when I was in high school and won the local competition and went on to the state competition. But somebody gave me $50, and a gas card to come to the college down the road from my school. And I remember thinking, you know, I was a senior, and I was a senior in college, and I was like, This is incredible. I can't believe somebody would really give me money to do this, because I would have gone and done it for free. And then during graduate school, I started looking into it a little bit more. And I started learning a little bit more about the business side of speaking, which is it's very important because like any art or any craft or any creative endeavor, you got to have both sides of it in order to sustain a living at doing that. And during that timeframe, I met a gentleman by the name of David Coleman, who had been working in the college market as a dating and relationship expert called the dating doctor. And he gave me a great piece of advice. He said, Judson, in order to be memorable, you got to do something that nobody else does. You have to have a bit stick an element, a piece of content, you know, a seven, a framework, seven habits, five things that something that people will remember, because they're not going to remember everything you talked about in 60 minutes or 30 minutes, even come a week, a month, two years later. And I came up with an idea to illustrate one of my main points is that everything changes, not everything evolves. And kind of the world is always moving. The world is always changing. And so I came up with this idea for something called the evolution of dance, started performing it in 2001. had a lot of success with it right away and that it became my signature piece that people would hire me and say, Oh my gosh, that's right. You're the guy that does the dance and I had kept doing it and doing it and probably had about 750 to 1000 performances over the course of those six years under my belt And then put the video up on YouTube. So I could get an embedding code to put it in my MySpace profile. And then it was very lucky that I had the first viral video on YouTube of all time back in 2006 with the evolution of dance, so it was the first video to hit 100 million views. And I held the top spot as most watched video for just about three years.

Shark 5:21
So that video was in 2001. So the videos did

Judson Laipply 5:26
it to you to know. So I started doing the dance in 2001. So a performing the dance, the video that I use was filmed the video footage that I use, I think was filmed in the fall of Oh, five. Gotcha. Cuz I at that point I had had, I probably had 50 different videos to pick from, and I just looked through all the footage and pulled the one that had kind of the best. And at that, you know, we joke that you look back in 2006. And it was filmed on a high eight digital tape as grainy footage. It was maybe 360 you know, dpi.

Shark 6:05
at best. Yeah,

Judson Laipply 6:06
it might have been 720. Back then, because it was it was technically HD.

Shark 6:10
Well, that's true. So that video that's on your YouTube channel is from 2006 is that the original one that has the 300 million views?

Judson Laipply 6:18
Yeah, that's the 310 million it sits at now was the first one that I uploaded. So I've never, I've never changed that I never touched it. I always was fearful of like, if you take it down, yeah, you lose the foot, you know. And back in two in 2006 2007. Even though my view counts as 310, it probably has closer to seven or 800. Because there were multiple sites that were you know, YouTube channels, and that that you could scrape somebodies video, put it up on your own. And there was one at one point that had over 70 million views on their channel that eventually YouTube went through and anyone that wasn't granted the right to use a video, they would just take them all down.

Shark 7:00
Well, 310 million is still 309,999,000 more than ever posted. So the dance, which if anybody hasn't seen it to make sure to add a link on my page as well. But what were you studying in school? What did you go to graduate school for?

Judson Laipply 7:19
So I went to graduate school, my master's is an education. But what I my undergraduate is in recreation and leisure, and I was a I am a big fan of active learning, leadership based activities, emotional intelligence based activities. So when I was in graduate school, I studied emotional intelligence, how it compares to leadership modules, kind of the traditional leadership modules, and then how to use games and activities to teach emotional intelligence and leadership concepts. So why is it that you know, if you want to talk to somebody about cognitive bias, why is it better to come up with an activity that can help display that show that instead of just saying, Oh, we all have cognitive bias, and you should try to do your best to not let those things interfere with your interactions. And so the dance came about, I was trying to come up with, with a closer I was trying to come up with something to be my thing. And I was watching a black comedian make fun of white people dancing at a wedding, there was at an event where there were a bunch of people showcasing. So there's this organization called maca, which is the National Association for campus activities. And in the early 2000s, it was very active in that the schools would come to this to a regional event, they would watch 40 to 60x, over the course of three days do 15 to 20 minutes hypnotists, comedians, bands, speakers, magicians, all sorts of different acts. And if they liked your performance, they would talk to you about hiring you to come to their campus. And it was a great way to get work in the college market. And it worked very, very well. From my point, my career and I was at attending one of the events, watching this comedian on stage and it was in Wisconsin, and he had been invited to a wedding of a friend is that I go to this wedding. I look around and I realized I'm the only non white person. Like it's just all white people in me. And he goes and I noticed a phenomenon that about every third or fourth song during the reception, the music would start playing and everyone in unison would get up, run to the dance floor, do the same dance. Then when the song was over, they would kind of just drop their arms, look at each other and then go sit back down. And he goes in this happen on that. And he started he was doing some demonstrations and it was real funny. And I was turned to my friend and I was like that is so true. There are so many songs that have very specific dances that when that song comes on, everybody does that dance. And then I was like had it be. You'd like to be funny to see some of those in a medley. And then I was like, that'd be funny to see some of those in order. And I ran upstairs to my room at the hotel and I wrote down on piece of paper, a scrap piece of paper, the evolution of dance, and I wrote down the first 12 songs that came to mind. And I went out the next day and I bought a mixing program online called audacity, which still to this day is like one of the most one of the most popular sound mixing programs available, learn how to mix music, mixed a two and a half minute track of 12 songs, and then went out and performed it pretty poorly The first time I wish I had video footage of that first one, but I recorded over it eventually, unfortunately, because it was not. It was not it was the Betamax version. Correct. It was definitely a practice round. But I needed to see how it worked. And even just the music and the half assed dancing at that point in time was enough that people were cheering and going crazy for it. And after I got done, a woman that I was working with at the time, this woman named Anne, who was kind of a manager slash agent came back and she was just like, Oh, yeah, like, like, this is your this is gonna be your thing for a while.

Shark 11:04
Well, you go to graduate school to get a degree in education, likely, I'm assuming to be to in the pursuit of being a teacher or doing so in the educational field. No,

Judson Laipply 11:15
I actually went, I basically got my master's because David Coleman, the guy that I had met said, Listen, I would recommend for you to go get your master's degree, because it gives you an extra layer of credibility. And they can never take that away from you.

Shark 11:30
So you knew that that was going to be a backup plan, if at most or if we anyway, a credibility factor. You had always intended to be a speaker.

Judson Laipply 11:38
Yeah, I had, I had wanted to be a speaker, basically, probably in the middle of undergrad like my sophomore junior year, I thought I would have to go work another job for a while and then go on to be a speaker. But when the opportunity to go to grad school came up. And I had been talking with David, he was like, Listen, I would say go to grad school. And, you know, keep speaking whenever you can, and I did for I did any event and everything. Every presentation that was in a class I volunteered to do every conference I attended as a student, or as a delegate, I would apply it as I would submit to present. And so I was always presenting but when people talk about the speaking world, or even the marketing world, whatever, you just talk about anything. The question always is why you? Why pick you? Why should I buy from you? Why should I use your product? Why should I use your service? Why should I hire you to speak, and at that time, I didn't have the first youtube viral video. And so everything you can do to add to that possibility, and having a master's degree, whether it's true or not automatically gives you a letter, an extra level of credibility, just like if you go get your doctorate automatically gives you an extra layer of credibility.

Shark 12:48
So at what point did you know that you struck gold? I mean, because there's one thing to have a viral video. But then the other is that this is where I'm going with my career now.

Judson Laipply 12:59
So there's, there's definitely levels to striking gold. When I when I started speaking, I've wrote a five year plan, a three to five year plan, I interviewed several people in the industry, and a lot of them said, Listen, you have to give yourself at least three years, you know, starting a speaking career just like any entrepreneurial, it doesn't happen overnight, you're not going to flip a switch and then you're going to be like, yeah, look at me, I'm a success. As much as we like to talk about life hacking and finding the shortcuts, you know, true success, true sustainable success needs a foundation to be built upon. And that needs to take probably at least three to five years. So I wrote out a five year plan that had k you know, 15 gigs, the first year 30 gigs, a second year, 50 gigs, the third and on and on and on. And I was I was right on track. And I wrote that in 2000 2000 2001 timeframe. And so when the video came out, I had basically just finished my five year plan. And I was like, Okay, I was gonna write another one. But let's just kind of see where this video thing goes. Thinking that at most, it would be a couple of it would be like a year and this is all 2006 which it's hard to think back what your mindset was like because viral videos didn't exist. Twitter wasn't around Instagram wasn't around Facebook, you had to have an educational email address in order to get access to Facebook. It wasn't even available for people who didn't have a.edu email address. And so, you know, social media was still based around geo cities and my space that didn't lend itself real well to becoming an influencer or establishing an online brand. You know you're a YouTuber didn't even exist then it was still just people posting one off videos here and there with maybe some people getting into the idea. So as far as striking gold, I don't know if that ever. It probably took a couple of years. For me to it. least say, Okay, this is going to be more sustaining than just this quick sprint. Like like anything you have a viral video you're going to have a few years of you're going to have, you're going to have a timeframe of attention. Now in 2006, viral video attention was a year long thing, because there wasn't much competition. Now the attention you get from a viral video is if you're lucky, a week.

Shark 15:29
Best Yeah, yeah, at best. Talk a little bit about the statistics, you bring up earlier presentation about how few videos actually go viral, because that's something that everybody's chasing to create.

Judson Laipply 15:40
Well, and the hard part is more videos go viral today than did 10 years ago. However, there are probably 100,000 more videos every day today than they were 10 years ago. So percentage wise, it keeps dropping, you know, the the amount of content and nobody knows exactly because everyone guesstimates these numbers. But it's estimated that there are over 11 trillion videos on YouTube alone, just YouTube, not counting tik tok, and Facebook and Instagram videos and snap. So if you think about that for a second 11 trillion, if you will, on a daily basis that something like 80,000 hours of content is uploaded every hour onto YouTube, which means it would take you like 80 years to watch one day's worth of content. So trying to go viral is unfortunately something that that's really, really difficult. From a pure strategy standpoint, and that was one of my points at the NSA at that that talk about reality is it's not a strategy. Never in your strategic plan, should you say okay, when we go viral, then we will, you know, unless you somehow have access to 50 a list celebrities who are all going to play a you know, who are all going to play a spelling game, or game. Yeah, or something along those lines where you'll get a bump, but you might not get real true virality. And that's the other part of it, too. You know, you can buy views, you can buy numbers, you can buy metrics. But that true virality is something that's really hard to predict, and it's not going to be a strategy.

Shark 17:25
Well, one of my favorite moments in your speech that I've seen where you talk about this is really looking at things as a moment versus a movement. And it's also you talked about the ice bucket challenge and the $200 million that have been raised for ALS research since then. I mean, it created a movement and I think for brands is specifically or marketers or even influencers are really wanting to enact change that you remember is I don't remember 99.9% of the videos that did go viral, because they didn't create any movement whatsoever. And it seems that so many people are chasing a moment that they forget to really create a movement. So elaborate, if you will, a little bit on what you meant by that story.

Judson Laipply 18:05
Absolutely. You know, and this is where you start getting into the the metaphysical and the philosophical idea around why people do what they do. You know, the difference between a moment and a movement from a purely viral standpoint is a is the level of participation. My video is a moment in time it's a video footage of me doing an elemental piece that people enjoy and brings joy to them. Kaizen day singing Chocolate Rain is a moment it's a video of him singing a song moving away from the microphone, him being himself things like that. The Ice Bucket Challenge, the Harlem Shake the mannequin challenge planking back in the day, the various challenges that happen on tik tok on a daily basis, those are all participatory things. Most of them don't have any sort of social aspect behind it any sort of change that they want to have take place, but some do. And we've seen some also just from a societal standpoint, with the Black Lives Matter of movement, the me to movement, we call the movements because they're bringing awareness to a concept to an idea to a conversation, and they have the ability to bring around actual change on the planet. You know, the Ice Bucket Challenge wasn't the original ice bucket challenge was just a fun challenge people did the two gentlemen that I talked about Peter and Pat, Peter Francis, Pat Quinn, they were the two individuals who kind of brought als into it and connected those two things together and that for whatever reason, helped that take off. And it's you can look back then to the year following that, how many different organizations then tried to get their own thing up and running after that, but like most things in the world of virality, you got to be first first is oftentimes way more important than anything else when it comes to virality. Because your people are trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. And so when you are an agency when you are a brand and you're trying to earn some of that attention, as opposed to buying that attention, if you're doing it for purely selfish reasons, you might get a little bit of traction, but it's probably not going to go that big. If there's a true desire to bring awareness to a conversation, and this is how, you know, kind of when something really becomes a movement, it it's not about that person anymore. It's, you know, very few people know the name Pat Quinn and Pete Francis. Because it was never Pat and Pete's ice bucket challenge. It was the ice bucket challenge to help raise money for ALS. So when somebody wants some of that, you know, it's the, you just pick a random brand, you know, the Oreo dunk challenge, which I think they've privately tried to do multiple times of how do you dunk your Oreo and make a video to show us how you dunk and that's fun, and that's fine. That's not going to change anything in the world. Especially when it's got Oreo dunking challenge in front of it.

Shark 21:14
Yeah, right, the logos all over it.

Judson Laipply 21:17
Yeah, it's fine to want to have that. It's fine to want to be about yourself, like we all have to market, we all have to work on our brand, we all have to try to get attention. And in this world of constant over. We just have so much going on in the world of trying to break through that we want people to remember who it is, and then why we're doing what we're doing. But if you really are trying to create a change in the world, and you want to figure out a way to have some virality around it, you have to detach yourself from whatever it is that you're going to send out.

Shark 21:51
Yeah, another thing that you talked about that I just thoroughly enjoyed was, you know, really how most people are chasing likes and shares and promoting that I know the conceivability and shareability conversation comes up was pretty good joke too, about how I see major name markers all the time. say that, you know, people are asking me for this research or that research. And we know they're not nobody's asking for it. And it never seemed sincere. But you talked about really, I think from a business standpoint, that matters to most of us that might be financing. Some of this is what actually works and performs rather than just the typical vanity metrics. And I wish she'd kind of tell us a little bit about the Virginia Tech Challenge box example versus the other and what's what's viral and then what's actually viral that performs.

Judson Laipply 22:39
Yeah, so I have a I have a good friend who is pretty cool, because he and I've been friends for a long time. And he he has a he has a business that is really niche, and that he works in outdoor 3d advertising, interactive pieces. And he has done some incredible stuff in his in his career. But it just happens that he has two incredible examples that I've gotten permission to use. One was he was involved with the fearless girl project, which is a statue that was placed in front of the Wall Street ball was supposed to be there for two weeks, and then it'll be in there for almost two years. And then they moved it to a permanent location. So we that was the first example. Almost everyone on the globe has heard or seen the statue of the fearless girl, they know what it is. And then the other one was this giant mirror box that I showed a picture of both of them and said, who's seen this one and the fearless girl and everybody raises their hand and who's seen this one and nobody raises their hand. And that particular box was a project that he had done for a company. And it was put on Virginia Tech's campus originally the first time and it was designed to give engineer students a equation or challenge it was called the challenge box. And if they were able to figure out what the equation was, and I don't even understand how the equation works. It was written by some professors like it was a difficult equation. If they solved the equation and a set timeframe, I think they might have had an hour once they started their challenge. The box opened up and they walked inside and it was all screens inside and it became an infinity room with some really cool video that played and then a live person popped up and said congratulations on the challenge box. We would like to invite you to an interview for the Lockheed Martin engineering space program. It was created solely for Lockheed Martin to entice engineer students to come apply for their space program. And within less than a day, I think it was supposed to be there for a week within less than a day every engineering student at Virginia Tech had heard about it wanted to be in it. It created this buzz and excitement. And then literally their goal. I don't remember what the specific numbers were but their goal was to end up with a few applicants and hopefully a one or two hires because in the end Engineering space, especially for a space program, the competition is fierce. And it was such a success that they have put the box on like seven other campuses, they go back every single year. And it's not that the fearless girl wasn't successful and wasn't a huge viral success, because you could argue that that might be the single most viral thing that's ever happened on the planet. Because it was it was everywhere. I mean, there are people and pretty much every country who have some access to the internet or television who have seen that statue. But it was about being able to specifically measure for a task because the company that commissioned the fearless girl statue was a hedge fund company who is opening a new fund designed around women based businesses. I'm guessing that the average person did not give $10 million to this fund. So they didn't, yeah, they gain a lot, they gain a great story. And they might have gained a little bit but most people don't know the name of a company that actually put out fearless girl.

Shark 26:03
If only they had put their logo all over Yeah, rather than face. For they probably wanted

Judson Laipply 26:08
to the concept being around though, you know, we have two examples of two great things. One that was a small scale viral success, and one that was a large scale viral success. But I made the argument that the small scale one is actually more successful, because they were able to quantifiably measure what it was they wanted to do. And so I was trying to convince people to recognize that when you have a brand, when you are marketing, when you are doing any sort of project, you're better off to narrow in on a specific area to try to increase the chances of going viral. And then we talked about being able to find commonalities that you know, one of the things every viral video or every viral entity has has an emotional connection. And the fastest way to connect emotionally has familiarity. So you have to figure out every every industry, every silo, every hobby, every everything that everybody does has a language and acronyms and like I'm a i like i like bourbon. So in the bourbon world, there are tons of phrases that are only familiar to people in the bourbon world. You know, mash and Tater are two great examples if you know so. Ask somebody outside the bourbon world mash and Tater and they're probably gonna think mashed potato. But inside the bourbon world taters are people who wait in line to get good bourbon on days that the truck gets delivered? And the mash is the makeup that gets fermented that eventually becomes the bourbon.

Shark 27:31
Yeah, well, I'll tell you what I also loved from that discussion, though, was, it wasn't that it was just measurable, because you would get people who would also say not everything has to be measured, there was nothing you could measure with it that was sustainable, or long term or impactful, it was a great moment that everybody remembers. So I guess it all goes back to measurement.

Judson Laipply 27:52
Well, and like you said, you know, you don't have to measure everything. And I don't, and I don't believe you do, either, especially when you have something that goes viral, because you're gonna have, if you get something that has real virality and ends up, you know, it's going to be in front of a lot of people that it doesn't matter. But when you talk about just marketing and branding and strategy, it's still a business, you still have to be able to you know, there are a lot of there are a lot of some of the early day viral entities that were unable to leverage their viral experience to create a business or create a make enough money off that one viral thing that that led, you know, everyone has this dream that if I can just have one viral video, everything else will be fine. Like everything else will be taken care of. And you can count on your hand the number of people who have had that experience, it's kind of liken it to a professional athlete. That'd be like a professional athlete saying, If I can just make one shot, then everything's taken care of like, no, that's not you got to make a lot of baskets, you got to score a lot of goals. You got to practice a lot of hours, and you still have to keep at it. Like there's never a moment where you go, Okay, if I can just have I can just have one viral thing, then I'll have enough money in the bank. I'll never have to work again.

Shark 29:09
Yeah, well, you have a phenomenal keynote. But I'm also and I know you have a big following on YouTube and respectful following on the other channels. But you don't have a gazillion followers on say Instagram. Oh no. How do you look at all at navigating all the other channels.

Judson Laipply 29:23
So I was I was 30 when my video went viral. I'm 45. Now, I didn't grow up in the 24 seven social media world. So I don't have the same desire to be on. You know, if you could make one argument against when the best time to go viral would be going viral in 2010 to 2015 was probably the most ideal timeframe. Because Twitter, Instagram, all those things were around and you could go from a couple of 1000 subscribers or followers to me, you know, maybe a million, because we all talk about now as well, if you can get a million followers on Tiktok or Instagram, you know, immediately become an influencer. And now you've got the doors are open to brand deals and brand postings. And yeah, that's phenomenal. And that's great. But we have yet to, we've yet to play this out on the long scale. And I think we're gonna start to see in the future a lot of people who are who don't have a good solid foundation as a human being because their existence and their validity was built upon external validation, all those likes, and all those things. And we saw it, we saw it with some of the early YouTubers who eventually kind of got to this point because your audience needs you all the time. You can't go on vacation, if you go away for a few days, and you don't post and people start freaking out and they start, you know, they start wanting more and collaborating. That's so for me, I would just have always just done whatever felt comfortable to me. What felt right I don't post regularly on YouTube, I might go five, six years without posting anything on YouTube. And I still have 100,000 subscribers just sitting there, who I'm sure if every time I ever post a video for the random reasons, they're always just like, I thought you weren't alive. Wow, it's great.

Shark 31:23
Well, a little more on the fairly recent era. Tick Tock has entertained me for especially through the pandemic and I see often when I watch ridiculous videos, you know, someone will do something in a video or series and then do I saw some guy cut people's hair on the street, somebody came up to him said, Oh, yeah, I've seen you do those videos on tik tok before, and they'll ask whoever the person is, or tell them you know, I've seen you on tik tok love what you're doing high fives and all. But those may get 10,000 to a million views. You know, yours has been seen 300 million times. I'm just curious. And maybe it was 10 years ago. But do you ever get recognized much out in the world? Are you just hanging out at the grocery store? Like the rest of us?

Judson Laipply 32:04
Yep. I was very fortunate to because if you could write a script for having a video go viral and pick something about it that would be beneficial in the long run is you can't tell that it's me in the video. Yeah, yeah. Because it's a footage. The footage is grainy. I have had, I may or may not have had yellow highlights at the time in my hair. Which makes it look a little weird. I was wearing a T shirt tucked into my jeans.

Shark 32:29
Yeah. So I haven't even you look at now. So,

Judson Laipply 32:35
so I think maybe in my life, five to 10 times, completely and totally randomly. I've I've been recognized. I have been recognized when I'm at an event, if I'm going to be the speaker. You know, some people might be on the lookout for you or things like that. But just flat out, walk up like Hey, wait a minute, are you the such and such? Just a few times, fortunately, because you're right, I think there are other people who have to deal with. And there's some people who like that. But there's also a lot of people who would say over time it would probably get, especially if they weren't able, if they were never able to benefit from it financially, which a lot of viral videos didn't benefit. financially speaking,

Shark 33:19
you close out your show, your original video was six minutes, but you do normally a three and a half minute video.

Judson Laipply 33:26
Now. So the full dance routine is eight minutes now. So what you saw, I only had 40 minutes total with what the keynote that you saw, I only had a total of 40 minutes. And we wanted to do some of the interactive part and getting people to do some thinking part. So I didn't want to take eight minutes out of 40 to do the full dance. So I have a version that I do for the virtual shows. Because in the same breath watching the joke what I do a virtual show is for all the people in audience I'm like now when somebody asks you what you did today, you get to be like I watched a 45 year old man dance in his basement on the internet so

Shark 34:04
I get where it plays well in a lot of venues with a lot of audiences but has a an eight minute funny funny dance video ever not played well, with an audience? You

Judson Laipply 34:15
know, I gotta admit, I don't I cannot remember a time that the dance didn't play well. I can remember time lawyers

Shark 34:20
and accountants dance.

Judson Laipply 34:22
Yep. And I remember times when I didn't do well for the first 40 minutes of my event where just for whatever reason, you know, we all have off days, but then when I finished with the dates, they'll be like oh yeah, okay, good thing you got that dance man. Good thing you got that day.

Shark 34:36
For as you get older hopefully there won't be any hips thrown out or anything. She might be like a 75 year old holding a walker.

Judson Laipply 34:44
Well the running joke is the dance is gonna go from funny to sad. And then eventually maybe back to funny again.

Shark 34:52
Yeah, well Judson, I ask everyone who's been on A Shark's Perspective what is their favorite kind of shark and why. Do you have any good fun shark story? My favorite, I think my one for you, too. I'm giving you a setup question that you should know.

Judson Laipply 35:06
I mean, I think my favorite kind of shark would probably have to be a hammerhead shark. Okay, just because of the fun. But the other one is I when I was a kid, I don't know where I saw this before what it was, but there was some cartoon or something where one of the young children because I did this for like two or three years when I was like six or seven, you put your elbows, you wrap yourself together, you put your elbows in front of your mouth, and then you just don't know how to open up your elbows and you are a shark. I think I might have been like lioness from the PA

Shark 35:39
that probably was I was thinking you were gonna say the dancing sharks who were with Katy Perry at the Superbowl. I mean that but they were terrible dancers so horrible dancers. Alright, well, Judson It's a special time of the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Judson Laipply 35:55
I am ready for the five most interesting and important questions I will be asked this week.

Shark 36:01
He There he goes. So Alright, number one, you've been on both of their shows. Oprah or Ellen?

Judson Laipply 36:11
I would say they're even So of all I mean, I do. I think I have the distinct pleasure of being the only person who's ever been on both Oprah and the Tosh point O Show. I'm pretty sure that no one had the Daniel Tosh was ever on Oprah as well. You know, Ellen and Oprah are both. They're both incredible human beings. They both done a world of good. And I know sometimes they both get bad raps because people say all they were mean or they weren't very nice, but I don't think anyone can ever fully understand what it's like, where every single person knows you. And you never have. You don't ever get to interact with somebody authentically again, because you always have to worry about is this person being nice to me, for me, or do they want something for me? Or do they think that I can? I can. I can't tell my favorite Oprah story was they had a surprise guest on the show when I was on Patrick Swayze came out to there was two there was a couple who had reenacted the dance from Dirty Dancing, and they had had some viral fame. And we're all sitting there and all of a sudden, she's like, we have a surprise guests. And Patrick Swayze walks out to say that, you know that and it was great. And during the commercial, the founders of YouTube who came on the show who never did interviews, but they came on because it was Oprah said to Oprah Hey, did you know Patrick Swayze was gonna be here, and she just looks at him and goes, Yeah, it's my show.

Shark 37:35
And one of one of the greatest Saturday Night Live skits ever Patrick Swayze dancing. Chris Farley dancing because Chippendale dancer. That was that was best. Number two, the Cleveland guardians baseball team, the new name, or the Cleveland guardians roller derby team, which is the Cleveland I just found this out. The Cleveland men's roller derby is a flat track roller derby league supporting the Cleveland guardians All Star travel team. So I didn't even know that there was a men's roller derby team in Cleveland named the guardians until they made the name change from the Indians to the guardians and baseball.

Judson Laipply 38:11
Yeah, so I was not unhappy with the guardians name. I do like the guardians name. And anyone out there listening that doesn't know the story. The guardians are four statues that were created a car across two bridges around transportation, and I think 19 in the 1920s. And so do a little research find out why they're called the guardians. A lot of people include, but also one of the spiders, which was original baseball team from before MLB existed. But it turns out of one of the articles here in Cleveland said they looked into it, but it was going to be a little bit more of a fight with Rick the University of Richmond, a college is also the spiders. And we live in a world nowadays with trademarks and rights and all these things. And I think they figured let's pick the guardians because it gives us a clean slate because the only other guardians are a roller derby team and then that I think there's an arena football team somewhere too. That's also card The Guardian.

Shark 39:05
Yeah, well, I'm looking for maybe this will help them get over their slump, too. So Alright, number three, you obviously have a huge following on YouTube with 100,000 plus subscribers, but let's talk about other video platforms that might be your favorite. Tick tock, or Instagram rails.

Judson Laipply 39:22
Ah, I don't do anything on Tick Tock. Only because I've I know what Tick Tock is. And I don't want to I don't want to be a tic tocs a time machine. You open up Tick Tock and immediately it's at least 45 minutes to an hour later. And I

Shark 39:39
like clubhouse. I do either one of them. And I feel like I've got a shave because I've been locked in for 24 hours.

Judson Laipply 39:45
Yeah. And so it's I know the tick tock videos are great. And I see a lot of the tick tock videos that get reposted on other things and I have watched Tick Tock stuff I've watched with my niece and things and I think

Shark 39:57
platform for dance videos that Right. I mean, it's

Judson Laipply 40:00
it's definitely got to be Tick Tock by far. I mean, tick tock dominates. If I was starting all over again. I would go to tick tock first. Yeah.

Shark 40:09
Agree. All right. Number four, favorite dance move. The robot or the worm?

Judson Laipply 40:15
Well, it was the worm. But since I'm 45 now, the worm, the worm has since been out of the dance for probably six or seven years. Yeah.

Shark 40:25
Alright, number five. And the most important question that you're going to be esterday is biscuits or cornbread. What kind of biscuits though? You pick use your imagination.

Judson Laipply 40:35
I mean, if it's full on Southern bits of honey and butter, then I would have to say biscuits,

Shark 40:41
Southern flaky biscuits. Yeah, that's way to go. Alright, so Judson? Where can people find out more about you follow your thoughts on virality change, which is a great keynote conversation, mature dance videos and more.

Judson Laipply 40:57
Well, you can always find me at my website, which is Judson Laipply dot come. So nlaipply.com, that's the same handle Judson likely the same handle for Instagram, all those things, and I have a community number, you can text me at 419-273-6455. And that joins like you can check me directly that becomes you become part of the community. And then I have the opportunity to communicate with people via text message that way. So I send out text messaged every once in a while, I am not anywhere close to the amount of content you're supposed to be sending out. So I sent out a text message yesterday. And then I look back at the last one. And it had been like four months since I had sent anything else. So it's always random. It's always thoughts, ideas. A lot of times it's book recommendations, because I'm a pretty avid reader. And I continue to read a lot of books. And whenever a book, whenever I read a book that I really think could benefit a lot of people, I'll try to advertise that book without any sort of affiliation whatsoever. So the one that I really like a lot now, if people are listening, it's called the psychology of money. Fantastic, fantastic book on just looking at money and how we relate to money and some really good practical advice for people.

Shark 42:15
Judson, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective, on my pleasure shark, I appreciate it.

Shark 42:30
So there was my conversation with Judson Laippley, a keynote speaker MC author and the world's first YouTube celebrity with his hilarious viral video of him dancing and an evolution of dance mix that explains how life has changed. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from our conversation with him.

Shark 42:46
First, so what do you do? Or what do you have that people remember? What's your signature bet, if you will, but whether you're a speaker, a basket weaver or a widget maker, hopefully you've identified not just what your logo is, or your messaging says, but hopefully you'll figure out what it is that they will remember about you.

Shark 43:03
Second, he asked a question that we should all at least try to answer as difficult as it is, whether you're a speaker, consultant, a brand or even a potential hire, he asked why you why pick you, why should I buy from you? Why should I buy your product? Why should I buy your service? Why should I hire you to speak with whatever credibility you have? I love what he said. So the question is, what's your Why you?

Shark 43:25
Third love this point, viral is not a strategy. So many people chase a moment that they forget to create a movement, and most don't have a three to five year plan after they struggled. He brought up the ice bucket challenge in Another notable art exhibit in New York, one drove 200 million in ALS research and the other while an interesting work of art did not perform the same way for a hedge fund and people are still not measuring correctly what performs. And remember going viral isn't what it used to be when you consider how fleeting it is. So just keep that in mind as well.

Shark 43:55
Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective dot com. Thank you again for the privilege of your time. I'm so thankful to everyone who listens. And thank you to the amazing sponsors Invoca and Drips! Would you please consider writing a review and letting me know your thoughts on the show? I love to read them and it sure does help me create better content for you and me.

Shark 44:14
It's time for this shark to dance again. But I may have to do it underwater where no one hopefully would see me. Please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
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