Author: Brittany Crockett

Welcome to the Content Machine Podcast. Today, we have part one of a two part interview with Scott Williams from the Discovery Park of America. Our guest today is Scott Williams. He’s the President and CEO of the Discovery Park of America. Scott, thanks for joining us.

Hey, thank you, Kevin. It’s exciting to be on this end of the podcast recording.

Absolutely. I was a guest on Scott’s a few months ago and enjoyed reading one of your books and enjoyed coming to the Museum whenever I get the chance. So why don’t you give us a little overview about you, Scott?

Yeah, sure. So I am, I guess, on my LinkedIn, I think it says I am a museum professional. I see myself as being in the museum business. Although when you work for a museum, you’re also in the tour and travel and destination business. I originally majored in advertising with a concentration in journalism. I’ve got that backwards, journalism with a concentration in advertising from the University of Memphis and then worked for ad agencies and different companies in the in the marketing arena. Landed at Elvis Presley enterprises, where I was first really introduced to both the tour and travel business and running a historic destination. Fell in love with both of those two businesses and the way they intersect and ended up moving to Washington, DC, where I got to apply both of those two skills at the Museum, which was the Museum of the News and the First Amendment in Washington, DC. Got to work with some incredible people and learned a ton. But I never really got over being homesick for West Tennessee, which is where my people are from, as they say. Discovery Park of America’s President, Jim Ruppey, was about to retire and they were looking for somebody to run this incredible place.

One thing led to another, and I got the job and have been here now for five years.

Wow. Okay, so five years. And then you’ve written some books, so I want to give you a chance to plug your books real quick.

Yeah, thank you. Just as a hobby, I love to write. Several years ago when the internet was new and I was trying to learn it just like everybody else was, I saw genealogy research as a way for me to practice writing and practice using the internet and using the new tools that were out there for us as communicators to use. I was one of the first people on Blogger, which was how we blogged back in the day. And so I had a genealogy blog and ended up getting a website. And one thing led to another from that. And I ended up publishing a book about Richard Halliburton, who was an explorer, who was from West Tennessee. He was from the same town my people were from, which is Brownsville. And that led to several other books. And so my most recent book is about David Crockett. So anybody who’s interested about David Crockett can Google Scott Williams and David Crockett on Amazon, and my book will come up to the top. So it’s really added the whole opportunity to be able to self publish and to be able to not have to submit your work and go through a publisher and wait for approval and all that.

To be able to have the ability to publish a book that I think needs to be out there has really added a lot to both my life and career that I would encourage others who are listening, if they’ve got that book inside them, don’t wait for somebody else to do it, they can jump in and do it.

I read the Hal Berton book and it was fascinating and a part of history of Weston City that I have never come across. So that was very cool. Now I noticed I’ve always referred to him as Davy Crockett, but you very intentionally called him David Crockett. What’s the difference there?

Back then in real time, Davy Crockett was really an insult. He went by David Crockett. He was a congressman. And that was a way that people would minimize his opinions. So they would call him Davey as a a childlike reference to his name. But he never went by Davey. He always went by David Crockett. And of course, it was Disney who brought the Davey back up. And I guess Davey had a better ring to it. So it’s Disney’s fault that everybody now knows he’s Davey, Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

Yeah. Well, when the mouse says something, everybody listens generally, right? That’s right. All right. So how do you get to be a museum director? Because that seems like there’s a lot of different career trajectories in life, but a lot of people don’t grow up being like, I can’t wait to be a museum director when I’m.

Growing up. Right. And what I found is almost 100 % of the jobs out there, very few people ever wanted to be that when they started out. And everybody’s path is completely different. In the museum world, typically, your executive directors are academics. Usually, they are typically going to be academics in the area that that particular institution represents. So if it’s the whaling Museum, the chances are good that the executive director is going to be a person who has a degree in whaling biology and has a PhD. In an art museum, it’s going to be somebody who has an art history, Masters, and then a PhD. So it’s usually very academic. My path was a little bit different in that, as I mentioned, I started off in marketing and PR and sales. My focus is usually everywhere I’ve worked, trying to get people to do what we need them to do, and that is to visit our institutions. So whether it’s Graceland or the Museum or Discovery Park, I have an emphasis on trying to get people here and trying to get people through the door because we can’t implement our mission unless we get people through the door.

So that usually takes up a lot of my day is implementing things that does that. So I think everybody’s career path is going to be a little bit different. And that’s what intrigued me about Discovery Park is if I wanted to work in a museum, the chances are because I don’t have an academic background in a particular area, I knew I was going to have to go to a museum that was unique. Now, the thing about Discovery Park that makes it so unique, and for people who’ve been here, they will understand this, but for people who are just hearing about it, when you work in the museum business, you often have to fill out forms and applications for grants and things like that. And they’ll want to know, what museum are you? And there will be a series of boxes, science, technology, art, history, transportation. The interesting thing about Discovery Park is there’s never been a box that I haven’t had.

To check. It’s all those things.

We are all those things. So it’s a children’s museum, an adult museum. And so it would have been impossible to find an academic who had an expertise in all those areas. So it just so happened that my eclectic background worked out well for this particular museum. But I’m not somebody who is going to be the executive director of the shed Aquarium in Chicago. That’s not going to make sense. Now, there is a part of this job that also relates to finances. You have to make sure that you’re running it responsibly and that you’re economically viable for long term growth. And so there’s part of that that I bring to the table. And then there’s also just the basic leadership. You’ve got a group of people who are trying to accomplish a common task. You just have to make sure that everybody’s rowing in the same direction. And then there’s problem solving and the things that anybody in charge of any business has to be responsible for.

Absolutely. Well, why don’t you tell us about the Discovery Park then? You mentioned the mission just a second ago. Maybe lead off with that.

Yeah. Another thing that sets us aside from most museums is our Genesis story. Robert Kirkland was a philanthropist here in Union City. A lot of people have heard of Kirkland’s stores. He and his cousin opened Kirkland stores. Robert Kirkland had a knack for being able to travel around the country and see a gigol and say, I bet I could reproduce this. A what? A gigol. Have you ever heard that word? No. It just means a product of some kind. So he could go and see a Vase and he could say, You know what? I bet I could have this Vase reproduced for two dollars, and then I could sell it for five. So he would import, have it manufactured overseas, import it, put it for sale. And he just had a knack for that because he got to travel around the world. He saw a lot of things. It really shaped who he became and how he approached the world. And so he was sad that there would be a lot of people in northwest Tennessee. And honestly, he was thinking more closer to home in Union City in Obion County. He knew there would be a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to travel around the world.

So they wouldn’t have those experiences that he had. They wouldn’t get to see some of the things that he had seen and the things that had meant so much to his life. So he was also a big jokester. He once wrote an article and had it put in the paper that he was working on a plan to move real foot Lake closer to Union City for economic purposes. And there were some people that believed him. So anyway, when he put an ad in the paper that said, I’m going to build a center for education in Northwest Tennessee, and I want you to help me, meet me at the library at this date and this time, and we’ll do it together. Well, a lot of people were like thinking, Is this another practical joke or is this legit? So surprisingly, for people who don’t know, Union City is a town of about 10,000. And O’Brien County has about 30,000 residents. Well, so that night at the library, more than 250 people showed up, which was really mind blowing when it’s hard to get 250 people to go to anything. That’s right.

Unless it’s a Taylor Swift concert.

Unless it’s a Taylor Swift concert. Right. So he divided the library into rooms and sections, and he put a piece of paper on the table that said transportation, science, history, drama, music, and marketing. And he said, go to the table that you’re the most interested in that subject. So people broke up and they went to their table and he said, You are now the committees. I want you all to work together and bring to me your recommendations for what you would put in a center of education in Union City. And so those people all worked together. Some committees worked more diligently than others, but everybody brought back the stuff. And then he took all of that to the museum professionals who then turned around and came back and made presentations to the group. Here’s what we would recommend. Here’s what we would do. His original budget was $30 million. There was a pause in the production when they had a changeover in architects. And so he took the money that he was investing and that he was going to put into Discovery Park, he invested it well. And by the time he was able to push the go button again, his investments had paid off and some other things had happened and he could invest $100 million.

So by the time it was done, he spent $100 million on Discovery Park and he was very specific. He wanted the best of every single thing, every aspect. He spared no expense. He wanted it to be the most incredible experience anybody could have. And as he said on opening day, and as I said, he was a jokester, but he said on opening day in front of everybody, he said, I hope this is the most fun that any of you all can ever have with your clothes on. So he absolutely made that happen. He was sick when they opened the doors when he cut the ribbon. He had cancer. And then he was able, however, to be there at the front door as the first busses of school groups came and kids piled out. He got to actually see Discovery Park being used and changing lives. So it’s a remarkable place with a remarkable story. I think one of my favorite things about Discovery Park is to stand up near the escalators because a lot of kids show up here from some of our more rural areas and have never seen an escalator. It’s their first time to see it.

It’s their first time to ride on one. And so that really shows you who we’re touching and how we’re helping. The escalators and the elevators and everything are in glass so that you can see how they work. So maybe we’re inspiring an engineer or two.

That’s awesome. And so what’s your favorite exhibit there?

I would have to say currently, my favorite exhibit is the one that we kicked off at this point. It’s been two years ago on innovation in agriculture because we did the same thing over again that Robert Kirkland did. And we put the word out, we’re going to create an exhibit on agriculture. What does it need to be? And we had a lot of focus groups with farmers, with Ag scientists, with Ag professors at UT Martin. We had one where we had all kids. We had a focus group where we just interviewed kids and said, What do you know about agriculture? And we just researched. And then we applied all that learning to the exhibit. And it was a million dollar exhibit. And it really, still today, is doing a great job of helping people understand why innovation in agriculture is so important. And it also gives you a real fun hands on experience, which is what we in the museum business, we want to inspire, but we want to do it in a fun, entertaining way. So now we are currently working on one called duck duck goose Waterfowl of the Mississippi Flyway. And that may become my favorite exhibit because we’re following the same pattern.

And it is so applicable, just like agriculture was very applicable to what we do here in Northwest Tennessee. Waterfowl of the Mississippi Flyway, one of the first things I did when I moved here five years ago is I’m seeing all these people putting sticks in their boats. And I’m like thinking sticks and leaves and stuff. And of course, now I know they’re disguising their boats so they can go duck hunting. But at the time, I thought it was such an odd thing to see. So it’s really going to be an exhibit that I think is going to help support everything that goes on here in visitors who come here to go duck hunting, I think you’re going to enjoy seeing it. But also just the spirit behind it has been really enjoyable to work with all the people who are excited. We’re partnering with Ducks Unlimited, and of course, there’s no better conservation organization than Ducks Unlimited. So it’s been a lot of fun. So I suspect that one opens in November. So I think it’s probably going to end up being my favorite.

Are you going to have Duck Hunter in there?

Are we going to have a duck hunter?

The game, the video game Duck Hunter.

You know what? We’ve actually talked about that. We’ve actually talked about that.

I know that’s in program one with West Tennessee fowl in it.

That’d be awesome. Right. We are going to have a real foot Lake style duck blind on our water here at Discovery Park. And people who have not duck hunted, which until recently that was me. But there’s a different style of duck hunting that is done on Realfoot Lake than what is done down in Arkansas or what is done up at the beginning of the Mississippi Fly away. So we’re really going to talk about the different styles that take place around the country and give people a chance to go actually sit in a duck blind and see what it feels like and see what it’s like. Here at Realfoot Lake, a lot of the duck blinds have refrigerators and stoves and they cook big breakfasts. And we’re probably going to have that. We’re not going to cook people big breakfasts. But people can get a sense for what happens in those blinds. And then also, the other confusing thing that we’re going to have people explore is the intersection between duck hunting and conservation. My wife is like, How does that make sense? They’re shooting the ducks out of the sky. How is that conservation? And so this exhibit is going to explore that.

How, if there weren’t duck hunters, there would probably be very few ducks remaining today as there are. So I’ve learned a lot during this process. And I think visitors are going to be like me and come in knowing nothing really about the whole topic and really learning a lot about it.

Very cool. Very cool. That concludes the first half of our interview with Scott Williams. Stay tuned in a few weeks, we’ll release the second half.

In a world of jobs, a workplace with purpose will count for more. Is there purpose in your workplace? I think this is something that will become more and more relevant to job seekers as the years go on. People want more than just a job. They want a place where they can thrive and align with the mission of the organization. A strong company has an identity, and a strong company with an identity is a competitive advantage. Why? Well, culture flows from identity. Who the company is, what it stands for is the start of a healthy company culture. Now, that’s not certainly all that there is to it, but it lays the foundation for where you want to go. And it’s famously said by Peter Drcker, Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The second reason why it’s important is identity will give someone something to attach to more than just a job. A company with a strong identity will attract people who seek purpose in their work. People who seek purpose in what they do are usually the best folks to have around. So if identity builds culture and helps attract and retain talent, what is it? Identity starts usually from the founder, but is frequently distilled into a few components, the mission, the vision, and core values.

The mission statement is what the company is here to do, not necessarily the how because the how can change, but the what and the why. These statements, if made properly, are short, memorable, will last decades. It’s not something you want to change every couple of years and will be something that you can work into all phases of an employment attention, training, onboarding, and really offboarding too. Vision is what the world will look like if your mission is successful. It is the future state that you might not ever get to, but it gives you a long term goal to look to. Core values are key components to building a workplace that is fulfilling the mission. This list of values can help you set your company apart and add to the character of your organization by encouraging certain behaviors among the team. So how do you go about implementing mission vision and core values? One, define them. If you’re the leader, this is your responsibility, but I encourage you to get feedback from your team and once they are solidified, write them down and make them available to others. Repeat it and make the idea sticky. Finding opportunities to repeat the mission statement, the vision statement, the core values will help it sink into the minds of those that are listening.

Repetition is important. And then make the idea sticky with graphics or mugs, shirts, hoodies. Making the idea sticky can help people remember what the statement is and help them reference it as they’re going through their working life. Make it part of the organization’s accountability. Use it as a structure for your annual report. Show the company how you use the mission statement to fulfill its goals this year. Allow your people to call you out for not following the core values. Reward those who do embody the core values. Make it a big deal. What’s measured is improved. Think about core values, mission, and vision this way. In an upcoming episode, we’re going to look at our company’s mission, vision, and core values. And if you want to talk about creating your company’s identity or making the ideas more sticky, shoot me an email. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Content Machine Podcast. If you found it helpful or interesting, please text it to a friend.

Love making content around here for our clients and for ourselves at Adelsberg Marketing. Today, we want to think about how to generate that content. We also like to think about things in 90 days or one quarter timelines to work towards success. So let’s talk about how to make a plan for 90 days worth of content. So where do we start? Three keys to being successful. One, someone specifically assigned the responsibility of generating and distributing the content. How do having accountability for these things matters? Number two, a plan to succeed made ahead of time so that you can be ahead of the curve when you’re trying to make things. And then three, making it a priority by putting things on the schedule, on the calendar, to take time to make things and make reminders to post those things as well. So for this podcast, every Monday afternoon, I have a dedicated time set out to come in and recording this podcast. When we think about the particular pieces of content, we’re going to talk through the process that we would want you to think about when you’re making one piece of content. And you can repeat that process many times in almost like a Mad Lib type format.

The first step to think about is what makes you or your business unique. We love Post it Note exercises, and if you’re familiar with those, this is a great time to use one. But if not, think about the following. Number one, what competitive advantages do you have over others? For example, do you have access to certain products that other people don’t? Or do you have a specific expertise? Number two, does any of our people have a great personality online? So is there someone in your company who is super comfortable being online? And maybe it’s funny, which is obviously not the case with me. And then three, do you have any processes that are interesting to the general public? We have video shoots all the time, and behind the scenes shots are generally interesting to people. So this is also a great time to think about your brand personality. Is your brand very professional? Then setting a funny guy loose without any restrictions might be a problem. So keep that in mind as we move further down the path. Using notes from that list above, we can then start to look at how that interacts with our customers’ wants and needs.

So one, what do your customers care about? It’s that old sizzle or stake situation. Are the customers really buying this from you or are they wanting something else? Are they wanting the sizzle or are they wanting the stake? What do your customers need to know? What information do you want them to know about your business? So you have to balance both of those factors. And then three, what’s the customer’s level of awareness about your business? Do they know that you exist and they know that you need your product and they just need a reminder? Or they are at the very top of the funnel and they don’t know that you exist and they don’t know that they need your product. This will help determine what type of content you create. Because if someone doesn’t know anything about you, you have to take a different approach to it than if they are already familiar with your customer. This will help determine what type of content you create. This will help determine what type of content you create. If a customer doesn’t know who you are, they require a different set of information if they’re already familiar with you.

Now, let’s combine some of these things. Let’s take one, what makes us special, and one, our customer needs, and one, our customer awareness level. And then let’s add some content structures to make the ideas work. What emotions are we wanting to evoke? Happy, sad, angry, cool, shocked, or intrigued? And then maybe pick a content structure. So, like, announcement, community generated content, expert opinion, get to know you content, guides, holiday relevant things, how to, listicles. A listicle is a list plus an article. Memes, polls, questions to the community, quizzes, specials or discounts, or testimonials. So then let’s pick a content medium. So maybe it’s animation, maybe it’s audio, maybe it’s a PDF document that they can download, or a graphic, some interactive device or quiz, live video, photography, stories, text, or video. So combining the types of information we want to convey with different types of structures and mediums, we can create an amalgamation that will help our customers be more aware of us. Now, do this a bunch of times. I would recommend two to three times a week to get started and have that ready. Have a list of those, so let’s say 30 of them over a 90 day time period.

And then here’s where it gets really challenging is plot these out on a calendar. To help you be successful, plot these out starting far enough out that you have time to make the first couple before the deadline arrives. When you’re ahead of the gun on this, when you’re ahead of the curve on this, it’s going to allow you to actually be successful in doing this and helping you stay ahead of what you need to be doing. Now, this is totally an exercise you can do on yourself. But if you’re a larger organization, we can be hired to come in and do a content idea generation session with our entire team. So feel free to reach out if you’re interested in that. If you found this helpful or you might have a friend who would find this helpful, shoot them a text, let them know about it. It helps us get the word out and helps us make more episodes. So thank you for your time. I hope you enjoyed the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back very soon with more awesome content.

Jocko Willinik must be one of the baddest dudes alive. He became a Navy Seal, and then later led his own unit of Seals, and then became a Seal instructor. He served in the Navy for 20 years. Then he became a black belt in Jutsu. Then he also started his own consulting company, Echelon Front, and now has manufacturing operations in Maine, making clothing, boots, merch, and he has his own energy drink. Jaco has an amazing track record of success and all of that with an English degree. So shout out to all of our friends with English degrees. So when Jaco talks about leadership, I think it’s worth listening to. I remember years ago hearing Jaco at a leader cast event and have been seeing him in various places since then, including a great episode of the Case of the C Neistat V log. My friends know how much I love Casey Neistat. My f andom for Jaco took another step, however, when I read the Extreme Ownership Book. It’s a fantastic book. What I love about this book is that it explains each point three times. One, as a concept from leadership, just a generic concept. Two, as a story from the battlefield from Jacko’s experiences.

And one is a story from the corporate world. This combines the repetition of a good leader, but then also with a storytelling element that makes it easier to remember and more relevant to the leader. So a couple of points that I think are worth mentioning when you think about extreme ownership. Extreme ownership is the concept that as a leader, you are responsible for everything. Blaming other people is not helpful. You are responsible for success or failure, and the desire to blame others must be deterred. When you are responsible for the outcome, act like you are responsible for the outcome. You will need to work harder and double check things, but you also want to instill the same sense of responsibility throughout your team. So the second concept is leading up and down the chain of command. Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well. This is not something people usually think about. They usually think about leading top down. But in the midst of piles of paperwork in the fog of war, Leif Babin, the Echelon Front co founder and co writer of Extreme Ownership, is having a conversation with Jocko.

And Jaco points out that Leif has the opportunity to lead those above him in the organizational chain. Instead of just complaining about the leadership requirements coming in from above, reshape the thinking of those above and think about, Well, what do we need to do better? What can we do better to help them make those decisions or endorse our decisions? It takes a lot of respect for those above you and motivation internally to approach things that way. Leading down can be simply done through the power of your position. We all know that, but that’s not the best way to accomplish things. Leadership is more than just positional authority. Being able to lead up the chain of command requires you to build trust in your abilities and those above you, and working to understand what your immediate supervisor is looking for or has to show to their superiors. Then also having the humility to understand that they might have different priorities than you do to push you in another direction and then being able to accept that. Can you enable leaders to take a different approach? These two concepts can be really valuable across many aspects of our lives, from work to home to church to civic groups that you engage in.

Understanding how to take ownership can affect a positive change in your world. So I would encourage you to read about that in Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willingham, but thank you for listening to the Content Machine podcast. Subscribe to get more episodes in your podcast player. The only one that I really was messed.

So at Adels Burger Marketing, we love new technology that makes our lives better. And I’ve been using a remarkable tablet for over two years now, and I wanted to share some of my observations about the technology. Why did I get one? I had noticed some bad habits that I’d been unable to kick. In meetings, I would go in and use my laptop for taking notes. And while there’s some efficiency here, so my notes would be easy to copy and paste, or me and my team could be in the same notes document at the same time, there were some drawbacks for me. However, I am easily distractible. Maybe I would have forgotten to close Slack before I started the meeting and notifications were continuing to stream in, or I would flip over to email real quick and get sucked into a thread that looked like I needed to respond to it. In short, it was controlling my focus too much. Alternatively, I had tried to use paper notebooks for all of my active clients. Paper eliminated many of the distractions, but there were also some problems. There was a major redundancy issue. If I were to misplace one of those notebooks, I would be in trouble.

Or if I got confused on which notebook to bring to a meeting, I would also be in trouble. Also, what happens to my old notes when I fill a notebook? They get stacked on a shelf and now I have a finding old info problem and a storage problem. I wanted a solution that would combine the two things. I had seen ads for remarkable, but it seemed a bit too good to be true to me. I think this is a product you have to try it to see how good it really is. Because I’d tried writing on an iPad before and that experience was terrible. So it seemed unrealistic to me that this was going to be that great of experience. Fortunately, it turned out that Alex Russell and our team had one of the first generation remarkables and allowed me to try it out. The handwriting was amazing. And that was the final test, the final straw. I knew that I needed to go buy one. So here’s what I love about the remarkable. One, it’s great for note taking. The handwriting is amazingly fast and accurate, and it feels very similar to paper when you’re writing on it.

And unlike an iPad, it’s super responsive. I can put my hand on it and write just like paper. And it was super fast. There was almost no discernible time delay from writing it to it being on the screen. The second thing, there’s no distractions. The remarkable is limited in its abilities. You can’t surf the internet. You can’t go watch YouTube. But I love its lack of abilities. It gives me no reason to get distracted from the task at hand. But it also has the storage tools and redundancy tools. So unlike my paper notebooks, the remarkable backs itself up to the cloud so that if I were to break one or lose one, which I have a history of, the data would be backed up and reloaded onto a new remarkable or available from download on the app. I can upload my own templates, so I was able to put together my daily micro scheduling page that I had on paper into a PDF and upload it, and I use that every day on my remarkable. I have significantly cut the cost of and wasted amount of paper in my life because of the remarkable. Screen sharing on the remarkable plus Zoom allows me to show my team ideas in real time and keep a copy of them in the remarkable.

I can live write on a document that is broadcast on my computer screen that I can then share through Zoom. It’s a pretty neat capability. So a few tips if you’re going to get started with remarkable. Number one, organize your files from the start. With its file structure being like a computer with folders and hierarchy like that, and it not being possible to search through handwriting like text for a searchable database, file structure is key to finding things in the long run. So start with good file structure. Buy the nicer pen. It’s a couple of extra dollars more, but it has an eraser on the top, and having an eraser on the top feels like it would feel like if you were writing with paper. And it helps you stay in the workflow and keeps you from having to switch your pen to the eraser tool on the sidebar. And then buy a nice case. The design of the remarkable is really solid, feels really good in your hands, except for one point. It’s very weak around where the button is that turns the device on and off. I dropped one in its case that came from the company and the button jammed and the device was bricked.

So my advice is to get a good case. I’ve dropped my remarkable times after that and had no other issues except for this one time. I actually commissioned one from Ricky Santos on our team who does amazing leather work. So go check him out on Instagram, Ricky Santos. He does great leather work. The remarkable has been a great addition to my workflow. If you have any questions about the remarkable, let me know. But thank you for listening to another episode of the Content Machine Podcast. Subscribe and let us know what you thought about this episode.