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{( speakerName('B') )}
I have Joe Pulizzi, who's kind of a content superhero. How many books is it now? Seven.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Seven books. Yes, seven books.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I've been following you for a very long time, and I just love how how you just tell it how it is. Where did Joe kind of come from?
{( speakerName('A') )}
I started in business to business publishing in 2000 and... just lucky enough to land in the position of content marketing. We used to do custom magazines for large B to B companies when I worked at this company and started to go and I had to go sell this thing to a lot of chief marketing officers and custom magazines and newsletters and then into blog posts and sponsored content, whatever the case is. I would go in and talk to a chief marketing officer and I'd say, do you do any custom publishing or do you know what custom publishing is or custom media or branded content, whatever. They were all the terms and nobody's paying attention to me. If you say custom publishing to a chief marketing officer, they're already sleeping before you get out the word publishing. So you're like, okay.
{( speakerName('B') )}
How much is this going to cost? Just get to the point.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No, they're like, I don't care if you're selling marketing things, whatever that is to a marketing professional. And you don't call it marketing. They tend not to pay attention. So that's when I started to use the term content marketing just to get some just to sell. And I was testing it out and I'm like, okay, well, when I said content marketing, do you do content marketing? What kind of content marketing do you do in your organisation? Now, they didn't know what that was, but they sort of perked up in their seats a little bit. This was at the time when we actually had face to face calls
{( speakerName('B') )}
They'd play along with you?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, exactly. I don't really know what Joe is talking about, but I'm a marketer, so maybe we do content marketing, then they realise we talk it through. Oh, yeah. They do have a custom magazine. They have an internal magazine. They have an intranet. They were doing all sorts of stuff. They were getting into social media, whatever the case is. And then fast forward into left that job in 2007. Content Marketing Institute was born in 2010. And then we really started to try to popularize the term of content marketing 2010, 2011 and 2012. And that was sort of the coming out party If you will, of content marketing....
{( speakerName('B') )}
it's just a phrase that I think a few people actually coin themselves now, isn't it, Joe? It has become a thing in its own right.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It sorta laughable, Wendy, because in 2007, I launched the blog The Content Marketing Revolution. That was the name of the blog. So it's funny, I started a blog and nobody knows what it is because nobody knew what content marketing was. And we were trying to define it. Well, thank goodness for the recession at the time and people's changing budgets and Google and social media and all these things sort of happened at once and we could create our own content. It was the democratization of content. And brands had to figure out they wanted to build audiences. And all this stuff happened at once, luckily. And then content marketing really became a thing. And now it's still one of the fastest growing areas of the marketing budget because it's just so slow, if you will, especially with large companies trying to build these media properties and they're just not used to it. It's a new muscle for them. So we'll still continue to see this thing grow for quite a long period of time.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah. I mean, I remember back in 2007, 2008 when the recession hit. I was only a baby in business then, and everyone was talking blogging and I was like, what on Earth are you talking about? What is this blogging term? And I kind of got it for me having done advertising in my youth. I was like, oh, so it's kind of that, well, I don't really need to do that then I poopooed it because I didn't see the point of creating a blog to sit on the Internet thinking that then people would say, oh, well, unless you spend thousands of pounds, nobody's ever going to find it. So unless you're then telling everybody about it. And I thought, well, I'd rather just have a conversation and then point them to it after the fact rather than lead with it. So it's interesting for me that, you know, in the, I don't know, 30 odd years of being in the business that things just take on new names, same principles all the while, and we're just sort of following different platforms or technologies, I think. Are you over on is it Slack or Telegram?
{( speakerName('A') )}
We have a discord channel.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Discord, that's the one. So tell us a little bit about Discord because I'm old and I need educating.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. It's just very simply. It's a discussion form. So if you have a group so let's say five years ago you just started a Facebook group, right? You're like, oh, great, it's a Facebook group. Everybody can talk to one another. Somebody brings up a post and we talk about that and comment that. It's the same thing on Discord, except you just have different threads. Somebody says, hey, this article is really interesting. And then you've got seven people that comment underneath it. And that's it. It's really simple. Telegram is even more simple because it's almost just like constant chat. So it's the lowest technology, so you don't even have to be. It's not a big deal.
{( speakerName('B') )}
What you're saying is even you could do it. Wendy.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, I figured it out, Wendy, so if I could figure it out, anybody can figure it out. But what's interesting is Discord became popular because of streaming so what would happen is if I was watching Twitch or YouTube Live or whatever the case is where the discussion is happening. Sometimes the comments go so fast on Twitch, it's really hard. Or if you're playing a game with somebody, whatever, Where's the conversation happening while everybody's in this first person game, whatever the case is, and they're on Discord. And the reason I found it was because of my kids and they got into it. And I'm like, what is this and what's going on? Yeah, we're just having a discussion. I looked at it, I'm like, oh my God, that's just like the old discussion bulletin boards I used to use 20 years ago. It's really no different. It's just live and you could see it in real time and you could see somebody comment in real time. So we've used it as part of our company. The tilt to say, okay, you want to get our newsletter, great. You want to access the content. You're an audience member. But if you want to be part of the community, that happens over here on Discord and it's amazing. People are meeting each other, they're gaining professional friendships. Whatever the case is, they're learning stuff. So I love it. But it's not for everyone. Because you go down that rabbit hole just like everything else. That's why the reason why I won't get on TikTok, even my kids tell me I need to. Just from a professional publishing standpoint, I won't get into it because I don't want to get addicted to it, because I feel I will. I don't want to go down that Tik Tok rabbit hole. The algorithms are so good.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I'm quite good. I just post and run.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, then I guess it's okay if you do that, if you do it that way. But it's amazing.
{( speakerName('B') )}
But equally, it's like lots of things, isn't it? If you don't fully understand it, then how can you really leverage the most out of it? So we've all learned that content marketing is something that we need to be doing to be answering the frequently asked questions or to give some insight or behind the scenes or personality behind the brand. How should we go on? There are so many areas that you can create content around in a business, and there are lots of different channels for you to be able to broadcast that. There are different pieces of content that go to different platforms. If you don't fully understand them, are you really putting the right thing out there? Which is why not much happens.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Exactly. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a great point. Most companies and I used to work with Fortune 500 companies, so they have billion dollar budgets and they're basically creating content and sending it on every platform and seeing no results. They're just, oh, great, we can do Twitter and we can do Facebook and we can do LinkedIn and we can do Snap, and we can do all these things. So let's just throw content out there and see what happens. That's not content marketing. Content marketing is about the idea that I want to actually build a direct relationship with an audience member. And hopefully if they begin to know, like, and trust us because of that, they'll buy more stuff. Well, how do you build that direct relationship? You send that audience member? Well, first of all, they have to opt in to getting your content, an e newsletter, blog post, a podcast, whatever. And then they do that and you deliver valuable information consistently over time. And then hopefully that turns into a relationship, and there's some kind of commerce that happens there. But most don't do that right. They don't choose to be great on one platform. They don't choose a content niche that they actually can differentiate themselves and cut through all the clutter. But I was talking with somebody, this is a couple of months ago, chief marketing officer, and they said, well, why content marketing? And I said, you don't have to do content marketing. But if we all started from zero today, you would just say, okay, I don't want to create something amazing for my audience or a group of people and build an audience. Who's out there? Do I'll wait till somebody builds their own audience? And then I'll go ahead and interrupt that relationship with an ad. That's the thinking, right? So we do advertising today. And by the way, advertising is very effective. But if you had to start at zero and figured you wouldn't say, no, I want to go interrupt a bunch of people with my ads, you would say, oh, let's create our own channel. Let's create something that's amazing for them and solve their pain points on an ongoing basis where they begin to know, like, and trust us, and then when they do that, they'll buy anything from us. It's just a better way. It's like marketing without sales, they be doing really right. You've got this wonderful relationship instead of this temporary thing where, hey, it's 999, come on, get it, or where to throw enough in front of them. So that's the thinking on that. But it's not that advertising is wrong or content marketing is right. There's just different ways to do it.
{( speakerName('B') )}
So a lot of listeners to the show are in business or looking to get into business, and they're needing to reach out to two other businesses. Basically, there's a real tilt towards B to B. If you were to start from zero, say you haven't got the tilt, you haven't got content Inc. Sure. Where would you start in trying to reach people?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, the first thing you do is you don't start. You've think and you create a strategy about do some research about what makes the most sense. So the first thing is who's the audience you're trying to target. And this, by the way, always changes when you get more market information. But who you try to target? And then what are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? So you have that on the one side and on the other side, you're like, what's your experience areas? What are you really good at? What's your knowledge about things that's over and above anything else? And then you put that together. That's called the sweet spot. That's step one. And then you move down into step two and say, okay, we found that we want to talk about, like in B to B, maybe it's mechanical. You're talking to mechanical engineers and you have some kind of software process or strategy you want to talk about. Great. Okay, well, you have to take it another step and say, well, why should people care? Why is this different than anything else that's going on there? Because the first thing you realize is when you get your sweet spot, there's 1000 companies creating 1000 pieces of content a day about that topic that you picked. So you want to niche it down and you can't niche it down too much to start with and say, and I want you to keep going down that rabbit hole, especially in B2B and say, well, what can we do? Or what can we talk about to that audience that we can be the leading experts in the world at? It's a very audacious statement, but you have to go down that far because if you go broad and say, I'm going to talk about cloud computing for IT professionals, oh, well, God help you. You'll never break through because there's 70 companies that's already doing that. And they're the most well funded companies in the world, Microsoft and Salesforce and Amazon. It'll never happen. You'll never be found on Google. So what is that? Is it a certain process in cloud computing? Is it something for financial professionals? Is it a different audience? What is it? Are you going to tell stories in a different way? Maybe there's no podcast on the topic and maybe you're doing that, whatever. So you find this content tilt, that differentiation. And then the third step, that is where we call building the base. You have to choose where is it going to be your content home? Are you going to create a newsletter? Is it going to be a podcast? Is it going to be a YouTube channel? Is it going to be a Twitch stream? What is it going to be? That's where a lot of people mess up because they want to be everywhere. You actually have to pick one that you're great at. You can diversify later, but pick that one. And then once you pick that one, you deliver consistently over a long period of time. You build that audience and find that audience. And that's the start. And it takes generally nine to twelve months of really figuring out and fine tuning. What is your story and who's your audience and what do you deliver? What's that value and all that build that audience. And then once you do, you can go on to the other steps, like, oh, now I'm really going to build an audience. Then I'm going to diversify and do lots of other things. Now I'm going to generate revenue from this audience. Those things come later.
{( speakerName('B') )}
So it's the same, isn't it? No matter. It is about making sure that you just do one thing good and you're not going to be getting that overnight success. 17 years on, I'm still looking for the overnight success.
{( speakerName('A') )}
You can get it right. You see them, you'll see YouTuber hits big or whatever, but they usually don't have a business model behind it, so you never hear or hear about it again. It's a really good example. Have you ever heard of Mr. Beast? Do you know who that is?
{( speakerName('B') )}
No.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Mr. Beast is probably the most well known YouTuber on the planet.
{( speakerName('B') )}
You can tell I don't do YouTube well (laughs).
{( speakerName('A') )}
He does a lot of contests and things like that. Started off in like 2011, 2012, creating YouTube videos on a consistent basis. Had no followers, nothing. Then did it six months, nine months, got 100 subscribers, a little bit more than after two years, got to 1000 subscribers and keeps working and finds his audience, finds his content niche, delivers consistently over time, and now is a multi billionaire, has I don't know how many millions, 100 million subscribers. Has a restaurant, a burger chain. I mean, it's amazing. It's a great success story. But a lot of people look at Mr. Beast and say, oh, my God, he just went on YouTube and got found and everything was right. No, it took them just like any other business, took him three to five to seven years to make this thing go, to build an audience and then to win. I mean, same thing with us. For those people that don't know, my wife and I owned Content Marketing Institute. We had a very successful exit in 2016. And people will say, oh, my God, I can't believe it. It went from nothing to... Well, they didn't know it. We started in 2007. I started with just a blog. It took me 22 months to even realize that we had an audience here, and we were saying something. And then I didn't even know we were going to make it until probably 2011, four years. So it takes time. Of course, you're always going to have those outliers that just make it right away. But generally that doesn't happen. I mean, Joe Rogan is very successful with his podcast, but he was already a celebrity. He was already on Fear Factor. He was already in movies and then started the podcast, and it took off. And he's very good at what he does from a podcasting standpoint. But even Joe Rogan has been podcasting for what, nine years?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah.
{( speakerName('A') )}
So I think people just sort of forget. As with all businesses, it takes a long time to build an audience and to build that relationship. Once you do, it's the greatest model on the planet, because now your marketing is already built in. Let's say you're in business. Let's say you're a mechanical engineering company selling that software. If you have 20,000 opt in subscribers for your email newsletter, that's really all the marketing you need anymore. Those are the people that are going to buy your stuff. And you don't have to convince them that you're trustworthy or credible because you've been doing that because they opened your content every day and they're already there. That's what I love about content marketing. There's no sales after the fact. Once they just make it's basically just them getting to a point where they're ready to buy and then they buy from you.
{( speakerName('B') )}
This is kind of what I teach in the telephone marketing training that I do. It's all about that valuable first impression and not going straight into the pitch. It's about finding out about them. So you're kind of asking lots of questions of a person. Yes. You're doing it on rinse and repeat quite often. But you're building a relationship when you're talking to a real person, when you're genuinely asking the right questions of the right people, then you're not worrying about closing I don't like the term. Oh, I've got to close a deal. If you started out on the right foot and you've got the right answers to their problem, then it's going to organically take its course.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, think of it like a cocktail party, right?
{( speakerName('B') )}
I love a cocktail party.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Let's say that you go to a cocktail party and I'm going up to you and I'll say, oh, hey, Wendy, what do you do for a living? Do you like it? Do you have kids? Do you have a family? Those types of things? I'm asking those questions. We're starting to get to know each other. It's great. And then maybe we get together for coffee. Two weeks later, we talk, we get a relationship. Great. Wonderful. It's all working out well. That's what it's supposed to be. That's kind of what we think from a content marketing mentality. And you're sort of delivering value all the time. Advertising is I'm going into the cocktail reception and I said, you want to come home with me tonight? That's advertising. So that's the difference. Not that it won't work. Absolutely. You might go to a cocktail reception where somebody might say, yeah, but the odds are no, it really is not going to work.
{( speakerName('B') )}
WIf illiam Hurt is there? Yeah, I'm going home with him.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. I mean, my wife has her list. Yeah. It's all good.
{( speakerName('B') )}
It is, isn't it? It's like being asked to get married on the first date. There are certain respectable boundaries that should be in place for these things.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's just being a human being. We're talking about storytelling and how just natural it is. And that's where I think that we treat marketing and business communication like it's a different thing, but we're just talking to human beings. How do human beings? Human beings don't want to get text messages out of the blue from people they don't know. They don't want to get spam email out of the blue with some deal that they don't trust or whatever. I mean, what do they want? They have questions. They have problems like anyone else at three in the morning and they can't get to sleep because they're thinking about problems with their job or their family or whatever. They're looking for solutions there. So as a business person, look to solve those problems either in business setting or personal setting. If it's B2B or B2C, you solve those problems and you do it on a consistent basis. You have earned trust for life.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Being a business owner is definitely not for the faint hearted, that's for sure. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors out there, isn't there? If you believe everything that you read, it's the work life balance lifestyle. You've just touched on it yourself and Pam 2007 to 2011, it's four years of you having to work together when there's two of you in the business. It's a family business. Gosh, that's a lot riding on it. You've got to have that true belief.
{( speakerName('A') )}
And you've got to be a little bit crazy. And most entrepreneurs are a little bit crazy because you're audacious enough to think that you can create something out of nothing. And actually build a business. And knowing that the failure rate is pretty high, within three years, half of businesses shut down. That don't make it. That's just within three years. That's horrible. I think it's something like within seven to ten years, only one in ten of those businesses are still going, oh, my God, what a horror stpry. But if you stick with it, and that's the opportunity too, because so many people give up and they don't realise that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Because one day, as you said before, you're on top of the world. You think, this is the greatest day of my life. I'm so glad I started a business. And the next day you're like, what did I do? This is horrible. I'm an idiot. Why did I start a business? Why did I leave a secure job with benefits or whatever? And it just goes back and forth all the time and it's very challenging. That's why my heart goes out to any entrepreneur and business owner.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I was talking to somebody the other day and they're saying you've got the front door and you've got the back door. If you're in business for yourself and you're thinking about the back door, which is kind of your Plan B. It isn't looking very good for you because what you're actually doing is you're already kind of heading that way because that's where your energy is going, isn't it?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('B') )}
So if you're an entrepreneur, it's front door only. Which I thought was quite a good way of looking at it.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I guess it depends on how you define risk. When I left my pretty good job in 2007, there were a lot of people came up to me. So I can't believe you're risking that. You're giving up benefits and whatever. And I'm like, well, today, what's more risky? Me putting all my energy into somebody else's strategy that I don't have any say over and they can fire me or lay me off at any time or actually going out and doing something and having full at least as much control as you possibly can over this entity. I feel like the risky thing is to leave it up to somebody else where I have no say. It's almost like it's the same thing with stocks, right? Depending if you look at the stock market, it's not necessarily risky, but if I invest all my money into, let's say, Twitter, I'm basically just taking a guess because I don't have anything to say. I don't have any say over the strategy of what goes on on Twitter. If I can't pick up the phone and call somebody and influence the organisational strategy, it's pretty risky. For me personally, I don't think we think about that a lot.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Well, you don't want all your eggs in one basket. So it's a spreading of the risk, isn't it? And that's where I think lots of entrepreneurs have what I call they take calculated risks. They've kind of thought a few moves ahead and know what the consequences are going to be. And they're prepared to take it on the chin because some things work. Some things don't. What's your feeling on luck, Joe?
{( speakerName('A') )}
There's no doubt about it (luck's existence). I've been in the event industry for 20 years now. We've had some events that financially, I guess you'd call big stinkers. They just didn't work out very well. But there were people there and there was a lot of value that was had by all. And it looked good, it looked professional. And you say, okay, this is a catapult for something better. You can do that. There's no doubt about it. You mentioned, okay, Joe, he launched four businesses and he's got seven books, and he's done all these different things and great, but I've failed way more times than I've succeeded. It's just that people just doesn't go on my bio. I probably should just write, you know, "Joe was completely broke and maxed out his credit cards" and didn't know what to do in 2009 and was considering going back to working at a job because I didn't get anymore. It felt like a failure. I mean, people just don't talk about that stuff. Nobody knows about that stuff until after the fact. And everything happened and it was great and it worked out. Now I can go back and tell that story.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah, it's like homeless to Harvard, isn't it? You can tell the feelgood story once you're feeling good about it. But I know certainly in 2009, I was working part time because my business was new. Everything collapsed a bit like it did it when Corona hit. So it sort of make do mend, and do what you need to do. When you've got a family, you still got bills to pay, you do all of that. But actually, what that journey took me on, I've taken as part of my story. So my banners, you'll see me out walking the dogs. Those dogs have come about as a direct result of working for that millionaire because they were his dogs and from his line. So I was taken on as part of the family and they became my family. That's part of my story. I couldn't have those dogs if I was out working for somebody else. Looking from home allows me to just go, you need to go now. What? Oh, come on then. And take a break. So sometimes some of those hard luck elements, I think it's about three or four years ago, I was several thousand pounds in debt and I'd got 28p in my purse. And I sat in a mental health first aid training course to try and sort of give myself some bolster around dealing with clients. And it helped me more personally than I ever imagined. But at the end of those two days, I learned to trust the people that were around me. To actually confess to being in such a mess. Yeah, but you can anchor on those points.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, especially it's interesting you bring up the accountability part. I'm a big goal setter. I talk about it in my last book, "Content Inc" where I'll go through my goal setting and here's what I want to achieve. And I say it like it's already happened or it's present tense or whatever the case is. But if I part of that goal setting process is to tell somebody else, do you keep it just within you have nobody coming back and say, how's that going? Obviously, if you ever do look at a twelve step program, it's the same thing. If somebody that's helping you through that, you're talking through, it's the same thing for entrepreneurs, same thing for business. You set a goal, you need at least one person. And that's why, whether it's we call a mix group here or mentorship group that you get into, it's very important. I have one that I'm in for content creators, for media professionals like I am. And we're all going through the same issues, and we're talking about finances, and we're all going through the same issues together.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah.
{( speakerName('A') )}
But having that accountability is really important because it's really a motivational factor. You know, you're not alone and you can do this and keep you focused.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah. I think it can add fuel to the fire. That could be a little bit dim.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Which is key to get going. Now, you mentioned Tilt, you mentioned your creative content entrepreneurs. I think it is, isn't it?
{( speakerName('A') )}
That's right. That's what we're pushing. That term content entrepreneur is a different kind of entrepreneur.
{( speakerName('B') )}
So tell me a little bit more about that program, because I could have glimpsed it, and I thought this has changed since I last checked in on this. So what's the purpose behind that slight shift?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we sold the company in 2017. I took a sabbatical year 2018, one of the greatest years of my life was fantastic. And then I started writing mystery novels, frankly, because I wanted to do it. I wanted to do something different and challenging. And the other thing is, my wife sort of challenged me because she'd never read any of my other books before. And I asked her, why didn't you read any of my other books? And she said, well, if you write something interesting, I'll read it. I'm like, "oh we're goin' there. Is that what we're doing?" So I said, right. Her favorite type of book is a mystery thriller novel. So I went ahead and wrote that worked through the whole process. Well, most difficult thing I've ever done in my career, but published in 19. And then we had a kick off party on March 8 of 2020.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Oh!
{( speakerName('A') )}
So everybody knows the time. It was just at the before times. And then the next week, everything in the United States shuts down, as it did in most of the world. And so I'm like, okay, well, this is weird. What am I going to do? I'm not doing the book tour anymore. What am I going to do?
{( speakerName('B') )}
It's going to the wife and say, "have you read my book yet"?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Exactly. Well, she did love the book. The book did fairly well, and whatever. It's called, "The will to die". If you like mystery thrillers, everybody will like it. But then I went into later in the year, I started as my friends and my colleagues and some other people I knew were getting laid off of work when we had that little recession go on. Or they wanted to change what they were doing, and they wanted the lead corporate environment, which has happened as well. They were asking me about my 2015 book, Content Inc. Which I rewrote in 2021. And I'm like, oh, there's something here, something here about not content marketing. Not where a larger business is trying to build an audience and monetize. There's just something about this loan creator, this one person creating a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, whatever, and building a business off of that. Of course, I have a little bit of history with that. I've been doing it for 20 years. We were very successful. I have a seven step process that you go through the whole thing. And I said, well, maybe that's my calling now that we're in this pandemic, maybe we should get back into that. And I said, well, as long as I'm going to rewrite Content Inc. And do that whole thing again, I should just come out and help people even more. So then we said, okay, we're going to launch the Tilt. The Tilt became and is two times per week newsletter for content creators, for businesses trying to do this thing and build an audience and monetize an audience and become financially independent. We launched a Creator Coin, which is a cryptocurrency as well, called Tilt Coin that came out in March of 2021. We have an event called Creator Economy Expo, which we're launching our first one in May of this year in Phoenix, Arizona. So we're doing the whole thing again, sort of like we did Marketing Institute. But instead of focusing on the marketer in a larger business, we're focused on just the content creator.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Well, the numbers stack up, don't they really, Joe, that, you know, there are way more sort of solopreneurs than out there that make up the economy. They are overlooked. There's not huge amounts of support for them. I can only speak from experience and lots of entrepreneurs that I speak to is that they are expected to react to market like a corporate. Yet there's just one of them and they're trying to be all things and have a life and maybe be a mum or a dad. An awful lot of pressure, isn't it?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, it's because you have so many things that you have to do. Like if you have a corporate job, you can focus on a few things around that corporate job. If you're an entrepreneur, you have to run the strategy, you have to run the marketing, you have to run the back office, you have to run human resources, you've got financial issues, you got accounting issues, you've got legal issues, and somebody's got to actually do this stuff. Yeah. So basically, that's what we focus on for an entrepreneur. You have all those things. But with the content entrepreneur, your product is you're creating content on a consistent basis to build an audience and then monetize that audience, so you can become financially free. That's the content entrepreneur, if you will. So it's all the same things as starting a business in any business that you have all these issues, but you have all these different complexities, if you will, for creating a media company, which is really in essence what you're doing. So it's odd. Most content creators out there right now, solopreneurs, if you will, creating content. They're not financially independent. They're not making a lot of money. There's not a lot of specific resources to help those people make money. There's a lot of talk about big celebrity influencers, but not what we call the middle class of content creators, content opportunities.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I don't know much about influencers, but I'm guessing when you've got celebrity status, you're not on your own. You've got an agent. So automatically you kind of get that PA to help. And this is, I think, in some instances, what entrepreneurs are not open minded enough about in taking on a coach to help them in a particular area, to strengthen their business, or to take on a VA that can help support them in certain tasks from the get go.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I can't stress how important that point is you just made because and I had to do this in order to grow. So in 2007, it's just me. And then I realise from talking to a couple of my mentors, if I do all these things myself, some of which I hate to do and others which I'm terrible at doing, we're never going to grow. This business is not going to you create a list. And on the one side of that list, I've got a piece of paper in front of me. I'm reading it. So it's like, okay, well, what's the side that you're good at or you love doing all the things in business and you write those down? There's 15 things. Oh, I like to do. I like to write articles, attract people for marketing purposes. And I like to do spreadsheets and numbers or whatever you like to do great, and you're good at it. And then you got a whole other side that you're terrible at doing. It is not helping you in any way. Well, you don't understand it if you don't understand it or don't hate it. So of course, your things like accounting are going to go on there. I had somebody I was getting in problems because I'm terrible at calendar management, as you know, because you did not deal with me when we got this podcast together.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I think your calendar management is brilliant.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. My calendar management is outsourced it to somebody else, which works very well. So I don't touch my calendar at all. And that's been a saving Grace for me to do that. Operations I'm terrible at. So we had to find project managers to outsource. By the way, these are all done through contractor relationships for the most part. And that helped me. I'm really good at setting strategy. I'm good at new business ideas. I'm good at sales. Great, Joe. You keep doing that and all these other things get outsourced. So when we sold Content Marketing Institute in 2016, we only had two employees, full time employees in the business. We had about 28 contractors that did different things. And then for the event, we had another 75 or so 100 people that did lots of different things to employees.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Framework? Yeah, it's just a different framework using the same well, I think it's a smarter mentality.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's less risky if you can do it. And of course, we want to make sure that every country is a little bit different legally. So make sure that there's a number of hours that contractors can work and whatnot. But I don't want to be beholden to somebody full time on benefits if I don't have to as a business owner now that we're trying to get around something. I'm just saying that's a lot to take on as a small business. So we always start people with like five to 10 hours a week relationships and see how it goes. Everything is a test run. I never go out with a formal job description and say, oh, here's the job and you're making $100,000 us a year or whatever the case is. We don't do any of that. We'll do. Here's the project we need done, or here's the task we need done. And if they do that really well, then we'll go ahead and say, here's another one and another one. And that's what we did. And we grew this wonderful family and team, and everybody loved it. And there's no reason why that can't happen. It's just, to your point, a different mentality.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And I think even as a deliverer, as a contractor, you want to just do your very best because it's your own reputation. It's a slightly different relationship. Projects are different depending on what it is that you do. But if you can deliver half a dozen projects through a week, gosh, that makes it for quite a diverse week. Whereas the idea of doing 09:00 Monday morning till 05:00 on Friday, doing the same thing all week, I think it affects your productivity as well.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Oh, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I love having a business, because every day you're working on a different project and you're not doing the same thing over. And the other thing you got to realize is your business owner. But so as all the contractors are all business owners at one time, we might be working with 100 different businesses of one, for the most part, coming together. I think it's very exciting and people don't realize that it's the solopreneurs, if you will, that are basically running the world when it comes to business, that's the majority of businesses are the small businesses. And we think about the Amazon's and the Intel's and the AMD and whatever Tesla that are so big today, it's fine. But it's really everybody else that is making things happen. And I think we're all the creativity is happening, and that's where the excitement is happening. But I'm biased. It's not that you can't be happy in a nine to five job. It's just not for me.
{( speakerName('B') )}
No. I'll quite happily interview Elon anytime. Yes, I will clear my diary for him.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. I'm not going to say I don't know why anybody's working for you. Nobody wants to work a nine to five job for you.
{( speakerName('B') )}
No. And the time zone. I don't know what the time zone is on Mars, so we probably need to check out first.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Exactly.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Well, Joe, this is such a rich conversation because it's human, it's content, it's expectations, it's business, it's entrepreneur, it's all of those things. But I think we've got to the part of the show where I ask every guest that comes on if they can share with us that one conversation that they can recall that created a turning point for them. And what happened next?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Well, the one that just came into my head was we had a business model where we're trying to get going. This is 2009. In September, I was calling to basically get a sale that I thought was a done deal. And the sale didn't go through and we were, you know, what my family would call the Boloney and Ramen Noodle years for us where we were living on.... It was tough times for us.
{( speakerName('B') )}
The difference between Heinz Beans and HP Beans.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, it was something like that. We didn't have a lot of credit card debt. There was a concern. Didn't know if it was going to make it all that kind of stuff. And I remember I walked outside and I just felt sorry for myself and I completely broke down. And I said, what am I doing? This is horrible. And let my family down. This is the worst thing ever and had a conversation with my wife. And I was saying, I got to get my LinkedIn profile together because I've got to go out and find a job. And she said, you've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. You've always wanted to launch this. And I know it's been a tough year or a couple of weeks or whatever. She said, just stick with it a little bit longer. Don't make any rash decisions while you're in an emotional state and go through it and maybe, just maybe talk to your audience, see what's going on. Maybe you'll get some ideas. And I did that. I'd go went through and I started to look at the email feedback that I was getting from our newsletter at the time. And they were saying things like, oh, Joe, love the newsletter. Love your blog post. Is there any content marketing training? Joe? Love this. Whatever. Is there an event for content marketers? So what I realised there is I had this idea of a product that was going to be the best product in the world that was terrible. And financially it didn't work. And at the same time, I was ignoring all the great advice I was getting from the audience that I built that said, here's what I would like to buy from you, Joe, but you're not offering that. And I said, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Like, what is wrong with me? I'm trying to sell this thing that I think is great. And they're saying, so forget it. I just scrapped the other thing. And I said, okay, we are going to offer what our customers are asking for instead of forcing something. So that's when we renamed the company Content Marketing Institute, we launched Chief Content Officer magazine. We launched Content Marketing World, the event. We had the blog that we moved my personal blog into the Content Marketing Institute blog and basically knew within nine months that the thing was going to make it. Content Marketing World came out in 2011. We were hoping for 150 people. We ended up getting 600. That event turned into a 4000 person event. So anyways, there's a couple of things. First of all, patience. Don't make any rash decisions while you're emotional. But the biggest thing is listen to your audience. Listen to your customers. Sometimes we get so focused on selling what we want to sell, we don't realise that maybe we shouldn't be selling them. Maybe we should be selling something else. And that's why we as they say, you have two ears and one mouth. You want to make sure that you listen more than you talk. And that's what we did. And luckily it all worked out. So very emotional times, I'll tell you that, Wendy. So we made it through, though.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah. I mean, you like me. Two recessions and a pandemic now.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes, absolutely.
{( speakerName('B') )}
This is where we go. Come on, bring it on.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. Recessions are great for entrepreneurs, as long as you know that you need to make it through the recession. Because on the other side of the recession, it's usually wonderful. Things happen as people open up their budgets because then half the companies they've given up by then. If you can set it up so you can make it through that recession, great things like we did that, as you said, 2007, 2008, 2009 made it through. 2010 was brilliant. 2011 was better.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Absolutely.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. But you have to keep the faith, be patient.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Focus on your customers. Things would go right.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Absolutely. Joe, honestly, thank you enough for coming and sharing your story. And the honesty is really what's touched me because I overshare probably some of the highs and the lows that I've had. But I think it's important to put it into perspective because it's like winter. You don't get a good summer without darkness.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. You don't appreciate it either.
{( speakerName('B') )}
No.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It makes it that much sweeter. The problem is when you're going through it, you don't think you're going to make it through.
{( speakerName('B') )}
But we do. We do. And for the listeners, I'm here for them. That's my role right now is to do that. And should anybody want to reach out to you, Joe, where's the best place?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes, I'm very accessible. So I'm at Joe Pulizzi. That's joepulizzi on Twitter and LinkedIn and everywhere else. And I try to get back to everyone, just sometimes it takes a couple of days, but I'm pretty accessible there. And then the Tilt stuff is the Tilt.com. It's a free newsletter. We'd love you to sign up.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Great content ideas in there.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Thank you. Everybody gets free Tilt Coin, our own crypto crater coin cryptocurrency. So if you want to learn about that, too, and it doesn't cost you anything.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Part two, Joe. Where you explain what crypto coin is to an old lady.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. I really do believe that it is a possible new business model for entrepreneurs where you have this idea of something that your audience can financially benefit from at the same time as you're delivering value. That's really what we're talking about in social token. And by the way, if you go to the site and you don't know what we're talking about with social tokens and NFT specifically for content creators, we have a whole library on the Tilt.com. Just go ahead and check it out. All the content is free and accessible and whatever. And to your point, there's a lot of people out there that have no clue. A lot of people think it's a scam. You read what you read in the media, and some of that's absolutely true. But at the same time, there's also a business model here for a lot of entrepreneurs to look at. We're in the very early stages, so think about it for Internet. We're in the late 90s of where we were in same thing that's going on right now. So just realise that the Amazon hasn't come yet and the ebay haven't come yet. These are all new things that are coming down the way.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I just wish that those that are in Coin, because I know there's a broad umbrella of terminology there that I just don't understand. But I just wish that those that are in Coin wouldn't ask me to marry them the minute that I connect with them. There's a whole industry there that needs some help in how to start a conversation off around a topic that's probably a little bit like speaking to an alien right now. So there's an awful lot of education that needs to go on with that particular industry. So tap me up and teach me your product and I'll help you speak to people in layman's terms.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's literally like we're moving from horse and buggy to the car. I'll be honest with you. I think I'm pretty technologically savvy for my kids would not agree with that, but I think I am. And it took me six to nine months to really get my arms around some of this stuff like Bitcoin and Ethereum and then what that means for entrepreneurs and what we need to think about diversification and those types of things. So now is the time to educate and you just figure it out and read some articles and to understand that this thing is coming and then you'll have some good education behind you so you won't get into some situations where you shouldn't be.