Do you love to buy auto insurance?
I've asked that question of thousands of people.
And there's no one who answers, yes,
that they love to buy auto insurance.
I had someone say to me, insurance sucks,
nobody likes to buy insurance, it's not fun.
And that was McKeel Hagerty.
He's the CEO of an insurance company.
So when you have a business that everybody hates,
you can't market in the same way that everybody is marketing.
McKeel Hagerty knew he had to do something completely different.
He knew he had to do something different.
And what he did was he said, we're
going to go out and build fans.
We're going to go out and create a culture that has fans.
McKeel Hagerty said, everyone hates the product I sell.
I can't sell in the same way.
So they specifically went out and cultivated fandom.
So Hagerty sells insurance for classic cars.
So what they did was they went to classic car shows.
And they still do this, hundreds of classic car shows each year.
And they do education.
They have a booth.
They share great information physically
with their customers about classic cars.
They have a magazine, the Hagerty magazine,
which is all about classic cars that they send out to people.
They have a fabulous YouTube channel.
And that YouTube channel has many, many people
who are watching them.
I'm going to share with you one of those YouTube videos
right now.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[ENGINE REVVING]
[TIRES SQUEALING]
- Oh, look at this.
Oh, man.
Here we go again.
This is a dream.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- My name is John [INAUDIBLE].
- Josh Gold.
- I'm Dustin Frisk.
- And I'm Courtney Frisk.
And this is why we drive.
[END PLAYBACK]
This channel has 780,000 subscribers.
May I remind you this is an insurance company
with 780,000 subscribers of their YouTube channel?
They have a valuation report where
you could go on and learn about the values of classic cars.
They have a driver's club with 600,000 members
of their drivers club.
They did something really clever for people
who love classic cars and go to the auctions.
So there's a series of auctions every year
in January in Scottsdale, Arizona.
And the challenge with this particular auction week
is there's multiple auctions going on at one time--
Sotheby's, Gooding's, Barnum's, Barrett-Jackson.
They're happening at the same time.
The problem as a collector is you can't
be at four auctions at once.
So what Hagerty did--
they're an insurance company, they're
not on the auction business-- they
created a free app, "Hagerty Insider", where
you can actually see each of the cars
at each of the auctions in real time as they're being sold
and what the selling price is, so that if you happen
to be at one auction, you're able to virtually see
what's going on at those other auctions.
I am a fan of Hagerty!
Yes, I am a fan of my insurance company!
I own a 1973 Land Rover.
It's insured by Hagerty.
I love my insurance company.
The idea that you can grow fans of any business,
you can grow fans even in a business that everybody hates,
means this is an incredible opportunity for you.
Here's what McKeel Hagerty told me.
He said, we went out and expressly challenged ourselves,
how can we build fans?
We discovered we're pretty good at it.
We have fun doing it.
And it matters.
Because that's our word-of-mouth growth engines.
Here is the results of Hagerty.
They're the largest classic car insurance
company, which they've become because
of this focus on fandom.
They've had double-digit compound growth
every single year that they've been in business.
And this year, they expect 200,000 new customers.
This is the idea of fandom.
This is the idea that can be implemented in any business.
This is an idea that can be implemented in your business,
how to grow by growing things.
[MUSIC PLAYING]