You what happens is you create a lot of mediocre content. It's not very helpful. You're not building an audience, and it doesn't work. And so a lot of people get to like, oh, we tried that content marketing thing, and it didn't work out. Well, you didn't really you didn't have a strategy. You just started to throw all kinds of content against the wall and you were wondering what was gonna stick. Nothing sticks. So the
This is tales from the pros where business leaders and influencers share their stories of inspiration, struggles, and successes. And I'm your host, Michael Georgiou. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tales From the Pros, and this is Michael Georgiou, your host and cofounder of Imagine Ovation. My special guest with me here today is a leading evangelist for content marketing, an entrepreneur, speaker, Amazon best selling author, podcaster, and storyteller.
He's the founder of multiple startups, including the super successful and well known Content Marketing Institute known as CMI, the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise brands, which was recognized as the fastest growing business media company by Inc Magazine in 2014 and 2015. And in 2014, this successful entrepreneur also received the lifetime achievement award by the content council. Please welcome Joe Pulizzi. Did I spell that correct? Did I say that correct?
I wanna make sure I said that.
That's pretty yeah. It's pretty close. You could get away with that, but it's, Polizzi
Is Polizzi. Oh. You're good. I'm Greek. I can't even say it correctly. It's
you know what? It's funny. Most of the time, I hear paloozy. I mean, you you were you were close. So, like, if you were in Sicily, that's exact you say Paloozy would be the pronunciation. But most people say Paloozy. They transpose the u and the I. It it's just amazing how Americans do that. If I when I go to Europe, everyone says it correctly, bar none.
Oh, of course, they do. Like, with my name, my last name, Georgio, can you imagine the craziness I had of people saying my name just disaster, man. I'm telling you. Like, Georgiano. I'm like, there's an n in my name? I didn't know the n in my name.
Crazy. See, it's weird how the human brain just puts word you know, letters in certain spots. It's it happens all the time. It's crazy.
Oh, man. Well well, Joe, I really appreciate your time, man. It's an honor to talk with you. And, you know, I've been following your your work for quite some time and love your story and and just kinda where you came from and and, getting to this this point, the successful point in your life. And I know, it it took a lot to to get here.
So that's, that's why we have this podcast to really understand the story and the background behind, people that that put in a a ton of work and perseverance to get to a a a great point in their life. So, you're definitely considered in, you know, in that area. So really appreciate your time, man. So just to kinda kick things off, Joe, you know, you being a a global leader in content marketing, can you tell us a little bit about your story and your background of of how you got to this stage in life?
Well, it all began when I was a young lad. I'm just kidding. I started in publishing in 2000. So, basically, I graduate I had master's degree from Penn State, graduated in 97, couldn't find a job, locked into a internal communications position at an insurance company in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm from Sandusky, Ohio, which is about narrow west Cleveland.
I live in Cleveland, Ohio today. Okay. And, and, and started working in 2,000, locked into this amazing position at a business to business media company called Penton Media. And I got put in as an account manager in their custom media department, which is basically content marketing. We would do custom magazines, custom newsletters, then into webinars and blog posts and podcasts and all other stuff for large business brands.
And that or did that from 2000 to 2007 before I went on my own. And, you know, what an amazing position to be in Michael, because this was an area that I just thought was going to be huge. I'm like, oh, my so this is, you know, if you go back to 2,003, 4 or 5, it's the dawn of social media, Google was taking off. And I just felt, especially with all these conversations with these very large business brands, that they were gonna have to learn how to tell their own story. They had to create their own content.
They had to do so on a consistent basis. And I thought that, you know, it was called custom publishing or custom media, and later we sort of evolved it into content marketing. But I said, this thing is gonna be huge. Went off, launched what ultimately became Content Marketing Institute. Took me a couple years of failing to figure that out.
And, you know, 2010, we launched Content Marketing Institute. And it just after the recession, Michael, all the stars aligned. People started to spend more and more more and more money on doing their own blog posts, their own mini magazines, their own digital magazines, and then into podcasts. And they needed social media content and all kinds of stuff. And brands aren't used to doing that.
So the it just created this whole amazing industry, lots of technology, and it was it was, it was wonderful to be there at that time to see it happen. And I I just you know, those things don't come around many don't don't come around often when you're in the middle of an industry movement, and and that's exactly what it was.
And did you have any other partners, when you launched the CMI, or was it just you?
Yeah. I launched it with my wife. So my wife and I co own the business, and, we were lucky enough that I, you know, we use credit cards and a lot of our own debt. Yeah. But I didn't have to go go out and get money, thankfully.
It made everything a lot easier because we ended up selling Content Marketing Institute in 2016. So it was a lot easier to go to market, you know, find the right buyer, you know, work through the transition and not have to worry about other partners. So by the way, any entrepreneurs listening, if you could do it without taking money, that's always the best way to go. I know a lot of people can't do that. You wanna be in the next unicorn, but it's always the best if you don't have to take money.
It always complicates things.
Yeah, it definitely does. That's what we did with, Imagine Ovation, Joe. You know, it was 100% bootstrapped, 8 years ago and, you know, we didn't take any money from anyone. It was just really we we incorporated the business. We had this vision and, failed a lot, succeeded a lot, failed a lot, up and down, up and down, and and just, continue to live and learn and and and, persevere, like, kinda like what you guys did.
And and it's it's definitely rewarding, you know, and and I want it's great because, I I want people listening to this that that are starting a business or or even have a business and and it's successful. You know? You don't have to risk you don't have to get funding to make it. Because when you do get funding, from an investor, either angel or VC or even family and friends, there's just a lot more that comes with it, you know, with with you know, the the saying more money, more problems. Right?
And it's the truth because someone's gonna give you half a $1,000,000. You best believe the pressure and the stress on top of that to deliver, and just the legalities around it. And it just gets very complicated, and you're it's it's difficult to really, to move forward on your creative vision. And, I mean, look at look at what you got you and your wife did. You built a successful company, and and you said you sold it a few years ago.
And now now you have other business ventures as well. So that's amazing, Joe. Really, I want people to be inspired by that.
Well, you know, it's Michael, it's a good point you make. I think what a lot of people don't realize, at least this is my opinion. So I'm sure a venture capitalist would, would not agree with this, but I believe taking money is a last resort. Sometimes you need the funding depending on what the idea is to do that, but you should, you shouldn't go to get money as a first resort. And when I talk with a lot of, young entrepreneurs, or they're looking to move from the corporate environment and start a business, they're always thinking I have to go out and get money.
And I'm like, well, no, you don't have to go out and get money. So true. You should try to avoid that. If you now if you can't avoid it, okay, that's fine. Go out and get your series a. Go do your thing. You know, get your angel investing on. That's all good. But, yeah, you complicate that issue. I just talked to somebody this morning that, you know, their first the the idea they took 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars, and the idea didn't work out.
They're at a point where they've gotta figure out what are we gonna do. They have they're they're looking at what their pivot's going to be. Well, they have to go back to something like 50 initial investors and tell them that it didn't work out and they don't know what they're gonna do next. I mean, this is it's a really tough I mean, he he was really stressed. I felt so bad for him.
He's really struggling. And that's what that's what happens. And I'm not saying, you know, you should go into it thinking you're gonna fail. But, that say, I think that person could have gone into it without initially taking money Yeah. And could have been successful. It
it's it's, yeah, amen. Amen to that, man. Because I'll tell you that I've dealt with 100 of entrepreneurs, and and startups that are looking to implement, and execute an an app and, you know, they have all these ideas. You know how we all entrepreneurs are always crazy. We're cluttered.
We're going a 1,000 different directions. But the the the the a big issue I've I've, I've encountered and that really concerns me moving forward is a lot of entrepreneurs, and not even entrepreneurs, even just some business owners that that have the have a business that they've been they've they've launched, but they think that, you know, they've exhausted everything and they need funding. And I'm like and and for me as an outsider, I'll be like, oh, hey, John or or whoever, you know, wherever your name is. John, have you considered doing it this way? Have you guys tried this?
Have you tried that? Have you tried this marketing strategy to get new sales? Because right now, you need sales. You need revenue. Right? That's what you're looking for funding. If you have revenue, you feed it back into the business, and then you can hire people. You can expand. You can scale. You can so on and so forth. So and they're like, well, no. I haven't thought about that. I'm like, okay. So you for example, you haven't done SEO? They're like, no.
I'm like, do you know that there's a lot of free resources out there? You can do an exchange of service and offer them something and they'll do it for you maybe a a few hours a week that can increase your rankings over time and and and you're gonna start generating some leads. You haven't been targeting Google at all and your business to business? They're like, no. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And they're asking for a $1,000,000 in funding.
Yeah. It's well, you know, it brings up a really good point. How, you know, we we I went through a couple different variations, before we got to Content Marketing Institute, and this was in 2,009, 2010. And I wanted to launch this basically Content Marketing Institute model is like a media company where we would have online education. We would sell sponsorships advertising.
But I didn't have any I didn't have a dime to my name at the time, Michael. So I'm like, how am I gonna get this thing off the ground? So we did. I packaged it up in a in a pitch. And I went out to our key supporters or the people that knew me and trusted me and believed in me. And I said, look. I don't have anything. I don't have traffic. I don't have anything right now, but here's the idea. And I would like to sell you an initial sponsorship.
I'd be called a benefactor, and I sold a bunch of these things for $15,000 a piece, and it worked out really, really well. So, basically, we pre pre funded the business, not by going out and getting money and selling portions of the business, but by selling sponsorships. And it worked as well as we could have possibly because I had enough money to then go and move forward. And then once we got to the end of the year in 2010, we were cash positive. But it it was just yeah.
Yeah. You offered value. It it was a value incentive, and and, you know, that's that's really what what makes you an entrepreneur. You you you found another way to, to make it, to pivot, and to, you know, use a a creative angle.
And that's that's
really what you did. Exactly. You know, and and going, you know, back to the the the content side, your, you know, your your core expertise here, aside from entrepreneurship and business. But I see sometimes you blog and podcast about being content first. Right? So for all businesses out there, what does it really mean to be content first?
I think what it means to be content first is to focus on the audience's needs above what you want before what what you wanna sell. It's really, really important. And this is this is a marketing tenet. So if you're thinking about how do you market more effectively, the first thing you have to do is figure out who's your audience and what are those things, those pain points that they have that keep them up at night. Those are the things that you market to.
You don't market and say, I've got this amazing widget. Here's all the benefits and features of that widget. Would you buy it? Yeah. There's most companies, that's the way that they do that, but we don't live in 1960 and 1950 anymore.
What we really have to focus on and when we say content first, we say, okay. Well, what if you can build something online digitally or in print even, but let's just say digitally, where you can draw an audience to you. And that audience starts to count on you for the information that you create, and they start looking to you for solutions to their problems, to their life problems, to their business problems, whatever it is. And that might come in the form of, you know, a regular blog series or podcast series or whatever it is, or a mini magazine, and you start building an audience of subscribers. Then once you build that audience of subscribers, you don't realize this until you get to that point.
But when you do, Michael, then you could really sell them whatever you want. And I believe that for, you know, any entrepreneur out there, for any business, the go to market strategy is let's not just focus on the product, this amazing product that we wanna sell and get it out there.
Yeah.
Let's focus on building an audience first. And then once you build an audience and you understand that audience better than than anyone else, they'll tell you what they wanna buy. And then you can go and create that and make all your money and and do whatever you want and live a happy life. But I think we get so focused on what we sell and what we wanna sell and what what we love that we focus on. What's the key.
And we missed the focus on what's the key to this whole marketing thing, and that is serving the audience. A lot of people forget that.
Sure. Yeah. Truly putting the community first. Right? Once you build that community and they're they're engaged with you and that their trust is there, they they believe in your they believe in what you're providing and the value, then you can do you can really do whatever you want. Right? Because they're they're engaged. They the the trust is there. It's built.
Well, when when we launched so, you know, we launched a blog, called it the content marketing revolution, and started to build an audience. Got to about, you know, 5 to 7000 opt in email subscribers. And I re and I was we were launching all kinds of other products that they didn't wanna buy. And finally, I started to go out and and ask the readers, you know, what are you doing? And then they used to email me and say, you know, we Joey, we really want is we want training.
Do you offer training? And Joe, is there, are there any big events out there where I can meet other content marketers and marketers dealing with content creation and storytelling? Is anything out there like that? And I'm like, oh my God, they are giving me product ideas
right now.
I unsolicited in a lot of cases. That's how content marketing world was born. I had I had no inkling at one point that we were going to create this large event called content marketing world. That had came because I got enough emails and enough blog readers were saying, Joe, we love all this content you're giving us, but here's what we really want. I'm like, okay. Well, we could do that, and that ended up being the best thing we ever did.
That's so cool. I mean, this this is it's a great, yeah, it really is a great intro to my next question in regards to, you know, just strategy. So, like, for for you being an expert in content, Joe, and I I know, at least for myself and many other business owners, who are who are you know, it doesn't matter if it's a product or service. There has to be a at least for me, I believe, and I know you believe this too, but every business really needs a content strategy. It's if a company doesn't have a content strategy, they're they're gonna I mean, it's if it hasn't hurt them already, it's gonna really be a killer to their business, because you know how we always talk about innovating.
Like, you know, Sears. Right? They're going filed bankruptcy. They didn't really innovate, like, Toys R Us. It's the same thing, I think, with content.
Companies who aren't putting content out there and providing value to their audience, who don't have a strategy, is really going to hurt them if that hasn't hurt them already. So what do you what do you think of your expertise? What are the key fundamentals of essentially building an effective content marketing strategy for a business? How do you kind of clarify that? Can you give some clarity on that?
Sure. Absolutely. I think the first thing is to keep it simple. And I wanna let me explain that a little bit. Because we have so many options and so many channels to create content and then distribute content.
A lot of businesses, small business, medium size, large business believe that because we can do this, what we should. So they start creating content and distributing on every platform known to woman or man. And it's you you what happens is you create a lot of mediocre content. It's not very helpful. You're not building an audience, and it doesn't work.
And so a lot of people get like, oh, we tried that content marketing thing, and it didn't work out. Well, you didn't really you didn't have a strategy. You just started to throw all kinds of content against the wall, and you were wondering what was gonna stick. Nothing sticks. So the best way to do this, especially today, is to start very simple.
First of all, figure out, okay, who's the audience you're targeting? You have to be specific with that. It's not you you don't you're not targeting 4 different customer bases at the same time. You have to target 1. And then you have to figure out and we call this the content tilt.
What is your how are you how are you gonna differentiate your story? How are you gonna break through all that content clutter and actually talk about something differentiated and valuable to that audience? So that takes a long time to figure that out. This is before you create any content. You have to figure out what your angle is.
And then instead of creating all this content on every different platform, you focus on we call this building the base. It's really simple. You focus on one content type, one channel, and you consistently deliver over time. What that means is that you're not going to create, oh, we're going to do blogs and all this Facebook book stuff, and we're gonna do videos, and then we're gonna do this TikTok stuff that we're gonna no. You're gonna do one thing really well.
You're gonna create the best blog in your industry or the most amazing podcast in your industry. And you're gonna do that better than anyone else with that particular content tilt that you have. Now not saying you don't you can't promote what you're doing using LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook. But I'm saying the main thing should be on one of these channels, and then you grow that over time. And it takes, generally, at minimum, 9 to 12 months to start building an audience.
The average is about between 12 18 months, sometimes longer. So this is not a quick fix. So if you're a business out there and you say, Joe, I wanna do content marketing. I got 6 months. What can I expect? I would say, don't expect anything. Takes a long time to build an audience.
Consistency.
Exactly. Consistency over time. So if you look at the greatest media brands and the greatest content marketing examples of all time. They've all every one of them started out this way. New York Times just launched a newspaper. Right? BuzzFeed just launched a blog. Huffington Post, now that has 300 different blogs, it's just started with 1 blog to 1 audience at the time. You know? PewDiePie just had his video series.
You know, go on and on and to look at look at the best, and that's all they and then once they built that audience, then they diversified. So that's the very simple thing. So if I was gonna if anybody's listening to this, I would say, figure out what you're gonna communicate of value that's not pitching your product. So figure that at your content till you gotta figure that out. And then what makes the most sense from your you your company standpoint as well as your audience's standpoint?
And and what are you going to how are you gonna tell that story consistently? And when you do that, you gotta do it, you know, every day, every week, every month, whatever the frequency is, you've gotta stick to that over a long period of time.
And on a promotional perspective for and you mentioned, you know, Facebook, Twitter, and and LinkedIn, YouTube, all these other social platforms. What do you feel when there when the content strategy is in place, and your angle is there, your audience, and and your your you know, who exactly you're gonna be talking to and and trying to engage with and, and connect with. Do you think that it's better to just stick with you like you mentioned, one platform, but you don't really know if that platform is gonna work yet because they're all they're all changing. Like, for us, in my industry, we're in technology, so we feel, that LinkedIn is really powerful for us because a lot of our target audience, let's just say directors of IT and marketing directors and, you know, they're gonna want an app or a website, things like that. So that beat so so LinkedIn's better for us and potentially YouTube.
But Facebook, not seeing that that audience isn't there, but organically, it's a lot harder because they they're heavily influencing paid. Right? Yeah. So what are your kind of thoughts on on how they're evolving right now?
Yeah. It's tough. I mean, you're getting less organic reach. Most of it's pay to play. Everyone's fiddling with their algorithm, including YouTube and LinkedIn. It's just not as bad as Facebook. So that that's what you have to deal with. Now if you're going to invest time on a rented platform, and that's what I would call it. It's not your own platform. It's somebody else's platform.
They own the connections on there. You gotta realize that. So what are you gonna do? Well, if you're gonna spend time on LinkedIn, then invest in that to, to really give it a chance to do well. So if you're going to, like, for example, for me, and, and as I'm promoting, you know, my new book, as I'm going out there, I'm saying, okay, I'm going to invest time in Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
And I'm going and I am going to make the time to communicate consistently and with those with the audiences on those platforms. But a lot of people don't have the time to do that. So you might say, look, we just don't have the time to make it with Facebook. It doesn't make sense for us, so we're gonna focus on LinkedIn first or Twitter or whatever the case is, and be great. Consistently deliver.
Really get involved in the communities there. Focus on, you know, what are the the tweet chats that are going on and the hashtags that make sense for you. Really dig into it. For most companies, what I see is they dabble. They dabble in all these social media channels, and nothing works for them.
So it's the same way. It's like, okay. You're if you've got so there's what? There's there's Twitter, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn, there's YouTube, there's now TikTok. There's your those are your main platforms.
Right? Pick pick one that you can really be good at and build an audience and try to get that audience to move over to whatever that content product is you have so that you can own those subscribers there. And that's it. It doesn't have to be rocket science. You don't have to be on it. You have my permission not to be on every platform. You you probably can't be good enough to spend the resources to be great on every one of those platforms.
It's very difficult. We tried it. Yeah. It's it's hard. It's it's it's draining. It's very draining. Yeah.
So it's just so simplify it. So simple you you don't have to do that. So that's great. You made a decision that said LinkedIn is the one you're gonna focus on. Great. You can be the best at LinkedIn. And are are you losing anything by being mediocre on Twitter or Facebook? No. You're not losing anything. You're probably gaining time actually to be better on LinkedIn.
So true. And do you believe, Joe, do you believe in some prudent strategies, or tactics in order to generate a return on investment and ROI from the content?
Well, my yes. Rent to own strategy. I mean, the what you wanna do ultimately is create the best email newsletter you can so that you can have opt in subscribers so that you actually have some control over your audience database. Because if you're building an audience on, let's say, YouTube here's a really good example. I don't know if how many people follow PewDiePie, but he's got over a 100,000,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Wow. But if you look at what he's done over the years, those 100,000,000 subscribers that he has on YouTube, they're not his. They're YouTube's. So if you are the business, and he makes 1,000,000 of dollars a year right now, I don't know what he made last year, 20,000,000, $25,000,000. So that's great for him.
But the problem is YouTube could turn that switch off tomorrow and say, sorry. We're not gonna send any more business your way. They can absolutely do that at YouTube is a private company, and we've already seen Facebook do that. It's already happened. We don't have any organic reach on Facebook.
It's almost it's almost none. So if you're PewDiePie, what is PewDiePie doing? He's trying to get to his own content. He when he launches a book, when he launches, new offerings, he gets people to go to his website and sign up for his email newsletter or his email updates, because then he has some control over it. And he's gets the double opt in, and he has that one on one relationship with those people through email.
And I hate to say it, but we're going back to 1999. I mean, email newsletters are way, way in right now more than they've ever been before, especially with all these regulations like GDPR that you've got going on. And Europe, that's gonna happen, and you've got the California law. And I think there's a laws going on in 28 states about your opt in email newsletters and things. Well, this is a great time for content marketers because if you can give something of value and somebody actually wants to subscribe to your stuff, they're giving you permission to communicate with you with, with, with them.
And it makes it a lot easier, but you have to have a really amazing content offering for them to subscribe in the first place.
That's what Zach was gonna ask you next is that when when you're asking people to subscribe to your content, it's not easy as we know. Right? It's difficult because people don't wanna give emails. They're they're very hesitant. They're they don't wanna be spammed.
So when you do offer a a a blog or a video on YouTube or whatever it may be, it's so hard to get through that through that barrier, that that barrier of entry. So what are there certain things that you that have worked for you? I know you you mentioned giving something away, but but I I feel a lot of people are still doing that. They're giving white papers or or, you you know, certain pieces of content. Is is there anything that you feel over your years of experience that that are really work well and that will work well for for people that aren't as as known.
Don't they don't have your thought leadership. They don't they they're not as well known as you are.
Well, the first thing the first thing is before you even get to the giveaway, Michael, is you have to have an unbelievably valuable e newsletter. Now right now, that disqualifies 99% of the people listening to this. Mhmm. Now I hate to say that, but it's true. I mean, you I when I go in and do a content audit, we'll look at their email newsletters, and they're all terrible.
They're like abstracts and links, and there's stuff that you can get any anywhere, and the content's not any different than their competitors are doing, or you could find easily on Google. Well, why should somebody subscribe to that? They're not going to subscribe to it. Or if they do subscribe, they're gonna unsubscribe pretty soon after. Have
not yet.
So the first thing is you have to look at what you're really delivering. Is this something truly of value? And then the second thing is the giveaway. So you so you mentioned it. It's like, okay.
They go to your website, you've got the sign up button and says sign up to our e newsletter. Well, you have to say, they're probably not gonna do it just for that. They've got you gotta give away something amazing, like something they'd pay a lot of money for. Like, this is research that's really important for our industry. It's gonna help you do your job better.
You can download it absolutely free. And with that, you get a subscription to our e newsletter. So great. They get that white paper, that research, whatever it is, that audio file, and then they're gonna get your e newsletter. And they'll look at it, but if it's not great, they're gonna unsubscribe.
So, I mean, I with with Content Marketing Institute, we ended up getting our list to over 200,000. I don't know where it's at now since we've sold it. Let's say it's about 220 or 230,000. And that was we really worked hard to make that a value. And by the way, that drove the entire business.
He's looking at the entire business model for CMI was driven by the email database that we had. Now as I left and I started doing jopalitzi.com and getting restarting, I started to build that email newsletter back up, and I'm working on it. I've got almost a couple thousand that I've started up. Now my open rate for my email newsletter is between 45 50%, which is pretty good.
Wow. That's that's that's great.
It's great. I mean, I'd like to do better, but it's because I really think hard about what should go in an email newsletter. And I'm focusing on who that audience is and how I can truly be helpful. So if you are working at a business and you focus on who your audience is, you have to spend a lot of time on making that content effort great and not do what we've done for the past 20 years with email, is just say, oh, let's spam the heck out of them. Now we need a little bump in sales.
Let's let's send them out a coupon code or whatever the case is. Let what we really wanna do is just focus. Stop selling stuff and stop grow and start growing a relationship with your customers by giving them something amazing through your email.
Yeah. You know, I thought of a cool strategy is is to for some people to even, to instead of giving a a tangible piece of content, which is which is great, but at the same time, it's saturated. I I mean, a lot of people are doing it. So maybe some to be a more creative, maybe offer a piece of advice. So if you're a tech if you're a developer and you have you have this website and, you're on YouTube, and you say, hey, everyone.
Please subscribe to my content. I know it's I know you guys don't wanna send emails. I completely get it. However, for me to give you something back, do Seth, if you have your email, give me a question, and I will give you a call and answer that question. And I will give you advice, free advice for for 5 minutes.
If you hey. If you're a business to business company and you have the time to do that, you can absolutely do something like that. You just gotta be careful that you actually keep your word and then do that.
Yeah. Because, yeah, you can have, like, you can have, like, a 1,000 comments.
Well, I mean, yeah, you've seen I've seen I've seen some really good, where where let's say you're an SEO company and you're trying to build and you'll say you'll give them a free analysis, a free audit of their website where they're they already have the software. It's not gonna cost them anything. It's a really good report you can give them. It might lead to more business. Those are the types of things and and online tools that you can do that don't cost you very much.
That's of real value to people. So I guess that's what I would think of. Whatever it is, it's a consultation, it's the research report. And for my new book, I've I've given away a an a bonus chapter that you can't get anywhere else, something that they can't get that they really want, great. Do that.
Yeah. That's that's definitely good advice. And what do you feel in regards to just content itself? Like, what does it really take to create an effective and impactful piece of content in today's competitive age? What would you consider a a a great piece of content, video or written or audio? Are there any key fundamentals to to what consists to make it just so engaging?
That could be a 1 week course. So I that that question, there's so Mary Heather. There's so well, there's so many variables that goes in that go into content creation. You also have to take into mind what resources you have to get it done. So if you are a small business, it could be one person.
It could be a half a person. If you're a large business, if you're Red Bull, I mean, you've got Red Bull Media House. You've got 100 and 100 of people all over the world creating content for you. So you have to really figure that out. I guess the one thing that I would focus on and and this this, of course, will it'll answer your question with 1 piece, but it's the bigger idea. We talked about this before.
I got it.
Yeah. Well, what I wanna know is what's that little small that small area that you can be the leading expert in the world? Now most people don't wanna answer that question because they wanna go wide. They wanna say, oh, we wanna cover all these things for our customers and answer all these solutions, and be the expert provider in these 8 areas. Well, you know what?
You're not gonna do that. You're especially not gonna do that right off the bat. So what's the one thing right now, that one pain point, that you could actually be the leading expert in the world? And if you focus on that, then your stories will revolve around that small little niche area. So if you are focused on, on a really a really unique area of mechanical engineering that nobody else is talking about online, and you can be the leading expert in that, just talk about that.
So I would say to answer your question, it's focus. It's focusing. It's just focusing on those stories that you could be the expert at that nobody's doing that you can build around. So if you look at any trade media company and and how we they, you know, they started with events and magazines and still to do today, What did they do to build into, you know, the bigger media companies they are today? They focused on really small things, focus on some aspect of solar power or some aspect of the, the shipping and logistics process.
You know, those are the things that we should think of. And and really, you can't be niche enough. You can't go small enough. So that that's the answer. And if you do that, it'll be a heck of a lot easier to create really good, valuable, relevant content because you're so niche.
Upgraded life. So well, yeah. I know it's I know it's a very heavy loaded question, but, I mean, that's that's that's perfect. Yeah, I I love it. Absolutely love it.
I think I think it definitely gives a lot of, you mentioned focus and clarity on on, a heavy loaded question. I I think we're also we're so consumed, of trying to do so much within our content. We wanna we we have a lot of messages that we wanna portray to our audience. We wanna give and and we wanna tell, but it it like you said, it's that that that overthinking, that that huge message that we wanna relay to the audience can sometimes be counterproductive. They can hurt us because it's it's so big.
The message is so large that it's not it's not focused. Right? It's not focused towards a certain a certain, audience that you're trying to target, or a certain message that you're trying to tell. And and this goes right into my next It connects right into my next question regards to storytelling. So one of my favorite questions.
I I love storytelling, Joe. Like, storytelling for me, it's one of my passions. I wanna get more into it. I wouldn't consider myself a storyteller yet. I haven't really put out too much content about it, but I I definitely consider myself in my heart a storyteller because I love hearing people's stories.
That's why I have this podcast. I love hearing your expertise and how you got to where you are today. Struggles, sacrifices, successes, you know, and it and it connects people. And I think that's a big problem in today's market and a lot of in most industries is that it's so money focused. It's so money focused and so business focused and so value focused that we forget about the person that we're talking to.
That's right. You know
what I mean?
It's so
and and it's hard to say that because when I see LinkedIn and a lot of these platforms I would say a lot of LinkedIn because I'm on it most of the time. LinkedIn, it's it's just it's always people selling selling selling. And then even when I see some of these other LinkedIn influencers, right, or, Mike, whatever you wanna call them, that they're heavily focused on just LinkedIn marketing promotion, even them, I know there's another intention behind what they're what they're saying and it's sometimes you can see who's authentic and who's not. So in regards to that, about storytelling, what does great storytelling mean today in relation to content marketing? Because I know you mentioned stories a little bit earlier.
Well, basically, when when you are telling a story, which by the way, is the is the thing that connect you you said this really well. It's the thing that connects humans together. I mean, everyone wants to listen to a story. When somebody buys a product, you've mentioned all these people that are trying to sell. When they buy a product, they don't, most of the time, they're not buying it for rational reasons.
They're buying it because something emotional happened to them. And that's how you change a behavior because you reach their emotional core, some emotion. So you get so the key to storytelling is getting some kind of emotional reaction because that's how behaviors change. So what does that mean? Well, you could say I mean, I know it's an overused word, but it's being authentic.
It's being true. It's being human. It's talking in a regular fashion and not getting into all these terms that nobody cares about. It's focusing on the real story behind the story and focus on the pain points that you're going through. Be honest with the challenges that you have as a company that you're dealing with.
The the best examples that you see online, whether it's on LinkedIn or whatever, are people that are getting on there that are just just talking like regular people saying they're struggling with issues. And people follow that. People I mean, if you look at Seth Godin's a really good one because if you look at, and he's blog yeah. He's blogged every day since I think 2001. Every day.
He hasn't he
hasn't missed a date.
Not know that.
Yeah. It's unbelievable. But what does he talk about? He talks about, man, I've been dealing with this issue. It's been tough. Here's what I think. Here's how I think it can help you. Really, really easy formula for storytelling. Does it every time. The I mean, I could I could almost tell when it's a new Seth, Seth Godin blog post what the formula's gonna be. He doesn't change it. He hasn't changed
it for 20 years,
and it still works.
And now he's doing these, he's storytelling of boot camp, but not boot, like, storytelling trainings, and it's crazy.
Yeah. So so yeah. So so here's how you so great storytelling is a real focus on who that audience is. Get something in your mind, whether that's a buyer persona or whether you're thinking about your you know, you're creating a story for your wife. I don't even know what you're doing.
Focus on this, this that's the audience. And then figure out, okay. What what do I what do I want that audience's outcome to be? A lot of people don't do that. Like, you know, if you ever look at a, an editorial calendar, and they'll say, oh, okay.
Here's what here's the blog post, here's the search engine key engine keywords we're targeting, and here's the due date and all that stuff. But what they don't focus on is the audience outcome. You should put that in there, and you should figure out, well, what do I want the audience to do with this information? Do I want them to feel a certain way? Do I want them to do something?
Because if you focus on the audience's outcome, you'll make sure you tell a really good story because you're focused on what's in it for them and not what's in it for you.
Yeah. I love it. And, you know, Oprah's master class, have you seen that? They that love that.
I have not seen it, but anything by Oprah, I would probably sign up.
It's so good, man. Yeah. You go with their master class, and it showed, I I saw, it was just a little video snippet from the, the the CEO of, Starbucks. And he was talking about leadership. And he was talking about some of his struggles, and he said it's very it's very easy to lead when everything is going your way.
He says it's difficult to lead when everyone's against you. No one believes in what you're doing. And and you gotta find you you gotta stay strong and you gotta believe in yourself and you gotta believe in the in the purpose and vision of this company, and and you gotta believe in the in the people involved. And, and I you know, that's why they're offering all these benefits to Starbucks employees now. You know what I mean?
The founder, the CEO is apparently doing all these things, all these great amazing things for the for the employees, and and and giving customer incentives. But but the way he did it was so cool because he was talk he was using his story. Even just even if it's not personal, just the business story and and his struggles and the company's struggles and using it for a good purpose and a good reason to to inspire others and and to give a good message for Starbucks. So that's what I love. You know what I mean?
And and that's kind of what I was I was asking in my question is what would you do to answer a lot of it? But that's what I was asking is is, do you think it's really important for the owners or whoever's, like, the the face of a business to tell the story, whether it's a little personal and and also the the struggles of the company in the past, to a certain extent, say telling that to the audience so the audience can feel something. Right? That's how
it works. There should be. It doesn't necessarily have to be the owners, but there there should be a face. And the one thing I would say that would back up exactly where you're going with this is you should feel a little uncomfortable when you publish something. Like, if you if you're if you hit publish and you don't feel a little bit like, oh my god.
I wonder how people are gonna react to this, you you probably didn't get edgy enough. You're probably not pushing the envelope like you should with something that's going to affect people in a in a particular way and to get an emotional reaction. So I guess I guess that's a good litmus test is, am I a little nervous about this hitting the publish button? If you're a little bit nervous, then you're probably gonna be okay. If you don't feel anything, you're you're probably not pushing the envelope.
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great, man. And, you know, Joe, were were there certain times in your life, you know, in regards to your story, were were there certain times in your life that were pinnacle moments in getting you to this place of of success, and thought leadership?
Well, the most pivotal pivotal moment when I thought that, you know, we had a when I started in 2007 with the business, launched initially an online matching service for content marketing. So basic we matched up brands who wanted content marketing help with journalists and agencies that offered that. And it was you know, I've loved the product. I fell in love with it. Thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Financially, it was a disaster. It didn't work out at all. And it was in the in September 2009. I'll never forget it where I I couldn't figure out what to do. It wasn't working.
And, I why it wasn't working is because I fell in love with my product, and I didn't fall in love with my audience. And what I should have been doing was listening more to the audience, and then I started to do that, started to look back, and started to really get all this, look at emails from blog readers and direct emails and all that stuff, and they to to the point before. They told me exactly what I should launch. They said, Joe, we want an event. Joe, we want an online destination for learning.
So that's the one thing I really learned is is to you can't fall in love with your product because your products always change. Look at a company like 3 m. You know, 50% of their revenue every year comes from new products within the last 3 years. You can't fall in love with what you're selling, but you can fall in love with serving your customers well. And you have to set up listening posts for them so that they'll give you the feedback when the time is right so you know what to offer them.
That that's my biggest learning. That's what I tell everyone, every entrepreneur, everyone in content creation is if you have the eye on the audience and you just kinda like, you know, Lord of the Rings kinda thing. You know? If you really focus the ISR and if you're really focused on looking at your audience at all times, you won't make the mistakes that I made before because I I focused on my own needs and not theirs.
And what what do you what would you consider your toughest struggles and challenges in your life or career, and how did you really overcome them? So aside from this, what were some of the toughest times in your career? Because we all, you know, we all struggle. We all have our our our, really tough moments in in entrepreneurship and and in business and even just life, and it it does sometimes they do get overlapped a little bit. Right?
It's I mean, we gotta sometimes it's hard to to be happy when you come home when you're really struggling with work or something or you know, I know it's I know they say try to disconnect. They try to come home from work and and not think about work, but it's hard sometimes.
Well, I mean, outside of the example that I just told you, what the toughest thing it was, it's not one thing. It's every day. Because if you if you want to be successful as your content in your content marketing strategy and build an audience and do the right things for your business, you have to do this every day. You can't miss a day. So that's why you create have to create an editorial calendar that goes a couple months out, and you have to get all these things in the pipeline ahead of time and get all your content creators Content Marketing Institute, we created a long form, like a 1500 word blog every day.
And we didn't miss any day during the year. 365 days, we delivered a post. 2 days out of the year, we delivered this amazing event, 1 on the East Coast, 1 on the West Coast. We, you know, we did all these things, and we put them in the calendar at the beginning of the year, and we had to execute on that. And that's that's where I think a lot of people go wrong.
They have really good ideas about content, but then they drop the ball in execution. That's the hard part is the execution of it. Everyone can have an idea, but a lot of people don't execute on their ideas.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I I think, like you mentioned, it's a lack of consistency. Right? It it is it is I struggle with it too, man. Trust me. It's, being consistent, having that discipline, it's so hard. Especially when you're running a business, it's so hard to it's to stay consistent with certain things, but but that's why you have to create that process.
Content marketing fails because it stops, because somebody stopped it. That's the reason why most programs fail. And and and you once you go through it, you realize that. You just have to keep doing it day after day, and that's the that's the problem. You you'll know when you're successful, but it's not gonna happen in 2 or 3 months.
Takes patience as Gary Vayner talks about it preaches it. Right? It's patience, patience. Yeah. So just to kinda close things out here, Joe, I always ask these last three questions. I call them the three how's. So first, how do you define failure?
Oh, I think true failure is when you don't get back up. I mean, failure is I've failed so many times, Michael. I mean, it's just another it's another day that you can learn. Just what what happened? What did you learn from it? And are you gonna get get back up again? That's all. I mean, true failure is giving up.
Mhmm. Gotta fail forward. Right? Yeah. And how do you define your story in one sentence, and how do you define your story in one word?
Oh, in one word is just blessed. I've been blessed by the situations I've been put in in the right I put you know, someone will say, you know, you make your own luck. It I I would say nobody does it by themselves. So get a really good network together of mentors and people that care about you and have them help you be accountable. Share share your trials and tribulations with them so they can help you every day to to do what you need to do.
And that's how you define your story in one sentence. Correct?
Yeah. I mean, god. That's, like, the hardest thing. Define the story. I mean, my story is it's a one sentence. My story is, you know, father, husband first, and then, you know, author, podcaster, BS, or, you know, whatever whatever. It's all secondary. But my story is first defined by my relationships close to me and then defined by what I do in business.
Love it. And last one is how do you define success?
Well, I love this quote. I'm just gonna this is my success quote. It's it's if you have tried not if you have tried something and failed, you are vastly better off than if you had tried nothing and succeeded. And I got that off a sugar packet when I was, like, 10 years old. And I've and this is what I've lived by, so I always just say, what's the worst thing that could happen?
Let's go and give it a try and give it a shot. And, that's success. It's it's it's it's being being unafraid or not, I mean, being afraid because you're gonna be afraid, but still moving forward and having the courage to try things when everyone else says you're crazy.
Mhmm. No regrets.
No regrets. Absolutely. And that that's what I try to teach my kids all the time. I'm always like, what's the worst thing that could happen? That's how people are unhappy in their lives because they don't do things. Yeah. It's from lack of action, not from the actions you take in most cases.
So true. Yeah. You're right. Awesome. Well, Joe, this has been a blessing. I'm, I love it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, and and I hope, hope the audience gets inspired and learns a lot from, from this episode. So where can, everyone find you, Joe?
So, yeah, all my stuff, everything on me, all my books at, jopulizzi.com, pulizzi. You can get my random e newsletter that I send out every 2 weeks. And then my new book, is called The Will to Die. It's my first novel. I've written 5 business books.
We've talked a lot about those concepts here, but my news if you like mysteries, thrillers, you can get that at the will to die.com. And the good news is it's absolutely free. So you can get it in audio book now. I'm giving it away for free. Just go to the will to die.com, and you can listen to, The Will to Die and and your favorite podcast player.
Perfect. Joe, thanks again, man, and I really appreciate being a part of this podcast, sharing your story with us. I'm very thankful. And, Yeah. Thanks again everyone thanks again everyone for listening, and this is your host, Michael Georgio, on Tales From the Pros.
Until next time. Thanks, guys. Please subscribe to our YouTube page and also follow our social media. There are links somewhere around here, but, we really appreciate it guys. Thanks for all the support and I'm gonna be giving you awesome content continuously And we look forward to seeing you soon.