Joe Pulizzi: The Roadmap to Becoming a Content Entrepreneur

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the Social Media for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by some content marketing royalty. Welcome to the show, Joe Pulizzi.

[00:00:11] Joe Pulizzi: Michelle, thank you so much for having me. I was rocking to that music. I just, I got in the zone and then you just, you started the show. So here we are.

[00:00:19] Michelle J Raymond: And then here we are. And I love to get people in the right mood. Now while I was doing some research Joe, this isn't a question that I sent you in advance, but people call you the "Godfather of Content Marketing". How does that make you feel?

[00:00:33] Joe Pulizzi: The first time it was used. It was something it's like 2011 and they got on the loudspeaker and they said, and now the "Godfather of Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi" and I was like, what was that? And I felt really strange about it. And then, you know, marketing is as it does, whatever. And I just leaned into it as I do with the orange that I'm wearing right now. And I'm totally fine with it. Anything that you can do where people remember you. Although somebody in one of the speeches, they introduced me as the Grandfather of Content Marketing and that's where I had to draw the line. I'm like, come on. I know I'm over 50, but please.

[00:01:08] Michelle J Raymond: Ouch. Let's, Let's not start the show off with that. I'm glad I got that one right. Now, I have you on the show and I appreciate you coming because we didn't get a chance to talk at Social Media Marketing World. And I thought, I have got an idea. How about you and I talk, I'll ask you the questions, which I would love to have picked your brain while we were there, but we'll just let the listeners of the podcast join us.

[00:01:29] Michelle J Raymond: And I appreciate you coming on because we're going to be talking about content entrepreneurs guide to staying profitable. Not just creating content because it's fun and we love it, but how do we connect those dots to staying profitable, so the businesses are sustainable over the longterm?

[00:01:47] Michelle J Raymond: Joe, in your experience, do you find, people are going broke out there with a dream of being full time creators?

[00:01:54] Joe Pulizzi: No I wouldn't say broke. I would say there are a lot of content creators out there that struggle and I think the biggest problem is they have the wrong expectations when they go in.

[00:02:05] Joe Pulizzi: There's so many stories out there of so and so goes viral or they built a great audience on whatever platform and not much is talked about with the day to day of. This is a business. You're an entrepreneur. So if you're talking about, okay, what is a content entrepreneur? You're like, okay this is a full time content creator where you're trying to build an audience, build a loyal audience that knows, likes, and trust you, and then monetize that audience in various ways.

[00:02:28] Joe Pulizzi: There is a process to doing this and we could talk about lots of those things, but I think that you start off with, why are you doing this in the first place? And how do you make sure you set yourself up for success? And that's why I say, look, This takes three, four, five years to really make it.

[00:02:45] Joe Pulizzi: And when I talk to people that are just getting into it, I think they think, Oh, inside a year, I'll be making a lot of money. I'm like, maybe? And I hope you do, and I want you to, but that's not what the stats tell us. The stats tell us okay, takes about 18 months to really get to some revenue and start to see it and maybe not profitable yet, but you see some revenue.

[00:03:04] Joe Pulizzi: You're starting to get the business going. But I mean, I've, I've done this a few times with my businesses. And the first one that took over three years until I saw that I wasn't going to have to go out and get a job. And we had to cut expenses. My wife and I had to have a conversation. We had to cut expenses down so we could make it.

[00:03:22] Joe Pulizzi: So there's lots of decisions that have to be made. So the first one is look, why are you doing this? Is it that important? This is not a hobby. This is a business. You're an entrepreneur. You're not just creating content all the time. You've got to do sales and marketing and operations and accounting and all the things that come with businesses.

[00:03:38] Joe Pulizzi: So now that said it's my favorite business in the world. But I'd want to put out the fact that it's not any easy. I mean, It's easy for the fact that you and I can have a great conversation and I'm not out there really struggling. I don't have to be super strong. I don't have to rough the weather. I can do things like that, but it is still a business and most businesses fail. So let's set our expenses really low. Let's prepare for that. And then we can be successful.

[00:04:04] Michelle J Raymond: I love that you talk about the timeframes because I think the most important conversations sometimes that I have with my clients is resetting their expectations of how quickly when they get started on LinkedIn, if they're just getting started, when they can start to see results. And I wish it was as simple as do training, post a few posts, get new business, and that was all that there was to it.

[00:04:30] Michelle J Raymond: And I've discovered as myself, I had no intentions of ever being an entrepreneur. I had to quit my job and this business kind of found me and I found my passion, found my calling. But I spend a lot of time all day, every day doing things that I don't particularly enjoy. I love creating content. I love training clients, but there's so many other pieces to this puzzle that I underestimated. I'm not going to lie that it was so many things that I've had to learn. There are so many things that I realize I have to do consistently to make sure that I get paid on time or that the business keeps running, or I can work on ways that I can scale, like my brain is, always spread thin.

[00:05:13] Michelle J Raymond: But how do you define a content entrepreneur? I know you covered it, but for people that may not have heard this term before, how would you define it?

[00:05:23] Joe Pulizzi: So generally, you're talking about somebody that wants to be full time, like they want this to be their business. Okay. So you are an entrepreneur. You're not just a content creator.

[00:05:32] Joe Pulizzi: And I use the term content entrepreneur versus content creator, because my mom is a content creator. She posts on Facebook. Everyone in the world is a content creator. If you think about it, we're all doing something on some social channel.

[00:05:46] Joe Pulizzi: A content entrepreneur, you are a professional. This is serious. So this is a business. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you're not just monetizing it in one way. Generally, if you look at a successful content entrepreneur, they're monetizing it five, six, seven different ways. And I want people to think of an, a multimillionaire. A multimillionaire makes money many different ways. They might have a job. They might have stocks and bonds and crypto, and they might have rental properties and they do all the things, right? People that aren't millionaires generally just have a job. So if you're just a content creator and you have one source of revenue, that's great. Good for you.

[00:06:22] Joe Pulizzi: But if you want to be a content entrepreneur, we have to think outside the box and do all sorts of things. The other thing that's really important is content entrepreneurs, like every major media company that's ever been created they start by doing one thing really, really well, and they don't immediately diversify.

[00:06:40] Joe Pulizzi: I've had the opportunity to talk with a lot of content marketers throughout the years. That was my expertise area and what content marketers do and all marketers do is they immediately diversify. They have an idea for content and an audience that they picked. And they're like, okay, we got to do the LinkedIn show. We got to do a podcast. We got an email newsletter. We're going to do a research report. We're going to do a webinar series. We're going to do an in person show, all the things. And the average company creates and distributes content 13 to 15 different ways. You know what? That's a recipe for disaster with content entrepreneurs.

[00:07:12] Joe Pulizzi: So what you want to do, and I'm not saying you can't use all the channels for promotion, but you should have one show. Is that a show like you and I are having right now? Is it a show on YouTube? Is it an email newsletter? Is it a podcast? Is it a TikTok special, whatever you're doing, I don't know, but it should be one thing. So focus on, okay, what is my content niche? We call it a content tilt, like what's my area of differentiation that I could break through all that clutter out there. I'm going to consistently deliver over a long period of time and leverage that one thing we call building the base, that one way to one specific audience.

[00:07:52] Joe Pulizzi: And then you just do the work. And to your point about being an entrepreneur, content creation is about 20 percent of your day. If that. The other parts of it is building a business and promoting the content, because if a tree falls? You have to build an audience that will actually get your content in some way.

[00:08:12] Joe Pulizzi: So most of it is doing promotion deals, buying advertising, sponsorship, whatever you need to do to make sure that people find that content. And it just takes a while to build an audience that knows, likes, and trust you. And that's why I say, look, if you're starting, you should start to see some tangible differences in your business between 12 and 18 months.

[00:08:33] Joe Pulizzi: Not that you're completely profitable and self sufficient and financially independent. That I would say is more to the three year level but that 18 months is where I feel that's why, You know, when we started, I started my first content business in 2007, we didn't have two nickels to rub together, we had to cut expenses way, way back in order to make it. We had two kids, three and five at the time. And I'm like, Oh, we got lots of other expenses. How are we going to do this? So set yourself up to know that timetable because you're a business person. Like it or not.

[00:09:04] Michelle J Raymond: I am listening to this and I can see the reflection of my own journey. As I've shared, did not intend on being an entrepreneur. Then quit my job on the spot, woke up the next day, I'm not working for anybody else and set about setting up my business. And I think I fall under the content entrepreneur category that you're talking about here. And when I first started, I was lucky. I picked up, new business easily. That was great.

[00:09:30] Michelle J Raymond: But then what happened was I started looking around going how do I be, a LinkedIn training business? What else are other people doing? And somebody said to me somewhere along the way, or I read it. You've got to be on every platform. Don't have all your eggs in one basket. So then all of a sudden I was trying to do Instagram, Twitter LinkedIn, LinkedIn Company Page, all these other things. And all that happened was I was on platforms I hated. I could not keep up with everything. I wasn't doing anything well. And so on my own journey, I was like, Whoa, at a point before I burn myself out, which I was getting dangerously close to, because I had to build the business in the background and I was building it from scratch. It wasn't like I picked an existing business and bought that and away I went. But I had to stop, because I realized the things I weren't doing well on other platforms were not a good reflection of me. And I think, I bit off far more than I could chew as we say on my other podcast, Michelle dives in the deep end and swims with the sharks.

[00:10:29] Michelle J Raymond: And I don't recommend that to people. I think it's better to just slow down and do things well, like you said, and have that realistic expectation because my biggest fear was, how am I going to do this for the next 20 years? There is no way that as a one person business at that time, I could keep up with everything, Joe. Like I was just going, this is not going to work. This is not possible.

[00:10:54] Michelle J Raymond: You know, I'm clear, I didn't want other employees. I didn't want to expand like that. Lil helps me in the business now to take care of, things in the background so that I can do more of the things that I love, but, at that first kind of two years, I was like, what's going on here?

[00:11:10] Michelle J Raymond: And I think that I just want to normalize that. If you're feeling like that and you're listening to the podcast and you can recognize what Joe's spoken about, then just know that's completely normal. Overnight success is not the norm. And I think it's glamorized on social media platforms and if anything, I would love for us to kind of debunk that myth because it's not quite so simple, right?

[00:11:34] Joe Pulizzi: No you're, I would say that most content creators start exactly the way you're talking about. They want to do all the things. So I'm hoping by you and I having this conversation, it'll be a relief.

[00:11:44] Joe Pulizzi: When I used to do consulting with these big billion dollar brands around content marketing, they'd say, okay, we're going to bring in Joe. Joe's the content marketing guy. Joe's going to make all kinds of recommendations. And I would go in and every time I would recommend that they do less and they start killing things.

[00:12:00] Joe Pulizzi: And I, I'm basically, this is strategy. Strategy is about saying no to many different things. So you can say an emphatic yes to one or two things. So if you're testing and you're, let's say you're testing and you're like, Oh yeah, we're going to test a podcast. I'm gonna test a newsletter. I'm gonna test this thing on YouTube or TikTok, that's fine.

[00:12:18] Joe Pulizzi: You might not know yet where you're going to get your groove, where you're going to find your audience. But at some point you have to start making the tough decisions because you'll never get to the great line, if all these things that you're creating are mediocre. You have to take all that, and I call it content energy. We take our content energy and we spread it out everywhere. And we're mediocre at best at everything.

[00:12:37] Joe Pulizzi: So let's take that content energy and focus it on, let's say, having the leading informational newsletter to your audience on your particular topic. And then a coinciding podcast, like that's a really solid model that works really well, if you do that and you don't have to do all the other things and.

[00:12:56] Joe Pulizzi: And I feel bad because when I started, I wrote Get Content, Get Customers in 2007, 2008 with Newt Barrett. And I think in that book, I say, you got to be everywhere your customers are. At the time it was like five places.

[00:13:07] Michelle J Raymond: So, it was you, you started it.

[00:13:10] Joe Pulizzi: It was me. I feel bad. Now I'm going back, I'm saying, no. I remember when Ping.FM came out and it was, you do one little social media text and it would send it out to 92 different sites at the same time. That's how many social networks we had in the year, in the 2008, 09 and 10.

[00:13:25] Joe Pulizzi: So bring it back, focus on doing one or two things. And it's like a Harry Potter's sorting hat. Like you do have a say in what you like to do. If you like to do podcasts or you like to do videos, you can have a say. And you can say, I don't want to be on X right now, or I don't want to be on TikTok or whatever. And make your choices to be great at the things you choose.

[00:13:46] Michelle J Raymond: I think I also had to say, even if I want to be on those platforms, what's more important to the growth of my business is focusing on things in the background, the unsexy things as we probably think they are. But if you don't get them right in being able to, in my case deliver a better service to my clients, then, the front end doesn't matter.

[00:14:07] Michelle J Raymond: I'm not here to just, attract a big audience. I'm here to build a business, as a content entrepreneur, as we're talking. I always like Joe to take a foundational approach and, strategy first, always. So let's help people make sure that they've got the building blocks, what things do you think are most important that they get right up front? And maybe that they can take a look at it if they've, you know, been doing this for a little while, things they should pay attention to.

[00:14:33] Joe Pulizzi: Yeah. So, thank you.

[00:14:35] Joe Pulizzi: I've been working on a process that I call the Content Inc. Methodology that we've tweaked over the years, but we've done hundreds of interviews with content creators, and we tried to figure out, is there a model? And basically there is.

[00:14:47] Joe Pulizzi: And it's the model that media companies use that we talked about to set up. So I can just real quickly go through this. So if you, first of all, begin with the end in mind. Why are you doing this folks? If this is a hobby, if it's a full time business thing you want to do, let's treat it as such, let's get your goals in order.

[00:15:04] Joe Pulizzi: Let's figure out if you, are you, is there going to be an exit someday? When you think about what a successful business is, what does that look like? So do all the goal setting and planning from that standpoint, first. And then you get into the content side and you say, okay, first of all, what's your sweet spot?

[00:15:19] Joe Pulizzi: And that means what's the intersection between your expertise area and your audience's pain points. So it's great. Okay. What's that? Okay. I got a content mission statement out of that, but most creators stop there. You have to take it another step. You have to find your content tilt. That's an area of differentiation where there's little or no competition that you can break through all that clutter.

[00:15:39] Joe Pulizzi: That's really figuring out, okay, I might need to niche down my audience way more, or I need to focus on a topic that's really underrepresented, or I'm going to go on a platform that not many people in my industry are on. And just think about what differentiates you. Like I talked about the Godfather thing and the orange. That is all part of it.

[00:15:57] Joe Pulizzi: What makes you different? What will make people want to know, like, and trust you. So you start there. We haven't created any content yet. We're just thinking about what are we going to talk about? What's our content mission statement, if you will, and then the base. And we talked about that's where you choose one or two things.

[00:16:12] Joe Pulizzi: You're going to start with an email. Is it a podcast? Is it a YouTube show? Is it TikTok? Whatever. So figure out that base and then you do all the things with, okay, am I going to do mostly audio? Video? Textual plus image content?, like you're focusing on one of those areas, you've got your content tilt, you've got your audience and you've got your consistent delivery.

[00:16:32] Joe Pulizzi: So now you've got a show, you're delivering, and then you go on and say, okay, I've got to build audience. So again, nothing wrong with social channels. You and I are our favorite channels. I think are both LinkedIn from a social media standpoint. I love LinkedIn. It's my favorite place to go for social media. But really it's rented land.

[00:16:52] Joe Pulizzi: Like it's a private company. They could do what they want. They could kick either of us off at any time. The algorithm might change same with any other social channels out there. And I want to. I want to be in a, in a, some kind of a framework or a mindset where I get up and if I've still have all my social channels and I still have all my followers there, then I'm like, whew, great.

[00:17:11] Joe Pulizzi: I made it another day, but I'm fully expected to get up in the morning one time and say, Oh, they're all gone. Algorithm's changed. They blocked me. I have a good friend of mine that just lost his entire YouTube channel. Never getting it back again, had a hundred thousand subscribers. It's like devastating to his business.

[00:17:28] Joe Pulizzi: This stuff happens. So what do we want to focus on? Best advice I can give you is email is still number one. Maybe some other someday I've been talking about this for 20 years. Some one of these days I'm going to be wrong. It's not going to be email, but right now it's still email because somebody opts into your message and you have the control where you can distribute to them at any time.

[00:17:49] Joe Pulizzi: And if something happens to your provider, your email provider, you can port that data over you own and control that data. So that's all about audience building. So whatever your, wherever your show's at, hopefully you have a coinciding email newsletter where you can get that data, you get that control.

[00:18:05] Joe Pulizzi: And then we move on to revenue. And then you're looking at, okay how am I going? I have this loyal audience or I'm building this loyal audience. Am I going to sell them advertising sponsorship? I could do events and conferences. I could do premium products like books or eBooks and sell those.

[00:18:20] Joe Pulizzi: I could take donations. I could do affiliate marketing. I could do training and membership and subscriptions. So you could do all those things or you could launch your own product off the back of that, or you could have coaching and consulting services. So right there, I gave you eight and I would say half of those you're going to do. Five, six. And the more you diversify, the more opportunities you're going to be. And then as you get to that 18 month, 24 month level, that's when you really start diversifying. And we diversify because we create stronger bonds with our audience by doing that. If somebody is opening up your newsletter and listening to your podcast, that's a really valuable customer to you, and they're more likely to buy from you.

[00:19:01] Joe Pulizzi: So that's when we get into diversification and if you do all the things Michelle. You're going to get to a point in three, four or five years where you're like, oh my gosh, we're kicking off money every day. I'm making money while I sleep. I built this mini media company. And then you might get to a point where whatever, what was your goal?

[00:19:18] Joe Pulizzi: Did you want an exit? Where you might say, look, I can actually sell this business for something. I can give it to my kids or I'm living the exact life I want to live.

[00:19:26] Michelle J Raymond: I think this is where I'm up to now. And my timeframe is probably around the three year mark where I've realized focusing so heavily on training consulting part of my business means that for instance, if I travel and speak at Social Media Marketing World, and I'm gone for a few weeks. The business, you know, it kind of stops, or it's on pause. It's not that the whole process stops, but ultimately if I'm not working, that money's not in there. And so from that perspective, this is where I'm at right now is got the audience, got that loyalty. So now monetize it, you know, and looking for different ways.

[00:20:00] Michelle J Raymond: So I appreciate personally all of those ideas that you've given there, because I can see just how important that is now. I'm ready to look at those kinds of things because I've done the work in the background to make sure that now I can go to those next levels. I can go to those next stages and look at things like this.

[00:20:18] Michelle J Raymond: Now you mentioned that, part of this revenue model includes building a loyal audience. What's your best tips for building loyalty with an audience?

[00:20:30] Joe Pulizzi: So the first thing is going back to what we initially talked about is be great at one thing. I like to ask the question, where can I be the leading informational expert in the world?

[00:20:40] Joe Pulizzi: Now, whether you're on the consumer or the B2B side it's more important on the B2B side, because we're more about informational experts there and knowledge workers, but ask yourself that question. So if you go and you've defined your content tilt and your content mission, and you're like, okay I'm going to talk about this thing to this group of people. Ask yourself that question. Can you be the leading informational expert in the world on that topic to that group of people? Most creators I talk to laugh at that. They're like, I can't, there's no way. You're not niche enough. And that is the problem. That's what's holding a lot of people back.

[00:21:13] Joe Pulizzi: And they're like, Oh no, I don't want to go to niche because I might be cutting out this opportunity or this audience or whatever. I was like, okay, that's fine. But you'll never be the leading informational expert if you don't. And then you can always go bigger.

[00:21:25] Joe Pulizzi: I'll give you a quick example of this. So I started what became Content Marketing Institute. My wife and I started it in 2007 and we started as a content marketing strategy and education, how to education to marketing professionals.

[00:21:39] Joe Pulizzi: And when we started in 07, 08. I said, I asked myself, I'm like, I think if we do the work, if we do the blog every day, we build the email. I think we can be the leading informational experts. Then a company that I now partner with, cause my podcast is on the HubSpot podcast network. But then they came out, HubSpot came out with this whole inbound marketing thing, targeting small businesses.

[00:22:01] Joe Pulizzi: And I said, Uh Oh they're going to eat us for lunch. Like they have so many resources. They have such this big audience. It's like inbound marketing, content marketing. I'm like, we're going to have to pivot. There's no way that we can be the leading informational expert with the resources we have to all marketing professionals.

[00:22:18] Joe Pulizzi: We made the decision in 2011, 2012, we said, okay, we're going to go and talk to enterprise marketers. We're going to talk to marketers at very large businesses. So what did we have to do? We had to change our content. Our content became about more complex issues, integration issues that you would have in a big company and not with a small business.

[00:22:39] Joe Pulizzi: Now, were we leaving some money on the table? Yes, we weren't for small businesses anymore. That was probably half our audience. We're like that was a tough decision to make, but we had to make that decision and say, we're going to be the leading expert. We've got to focus on an audience that we have an opportunity and we can build a moat.

[00:22:54] Joe Pulizzi: Made that change. Content Marketing World, our event went from 600 people to 4,000 plus people in a short period of time because we limited the audience and we became more of an expert to that group of people. So I could talk all day long. We could talk about all the different ways to create content and SEO and leverage AI, and those are all important.

[00:23:15] Joe Pulizzi: But the most important thing is get the strategy, right? The most important thing who are you talking to? What is that content niche that you're going after? And do you have an opportunity to build a loyal audience in the first place? I would have everybody that's listening to this or watching this, let's just take a step back and look at that and actually lay out your content mission.

[00:23:35] Joe Pulizzi: And you do that and say, okay who is my specific audience? What am I specifically delivering to that audience? And when? And every piece of content I put out, what is the outcome I want for the audience? Are you helping them live a better life? Get a better job? What is it with every piece of content?

[00:23:52] Joe Pulizzi: And that should be wrapped around a content mission. And if you're with a media company, it'd be an editorial mission. And that's where I want everyone listening to this to sit with that and take two weeks and say, ah, because. I, I mean, I, I talk to content creators who want to be content entrepreneurs all the time, and this is where they miss.

[00:24:10] Joe Pulizzi: I said, do you know that you're already up against a hundred thousand people competing, talking about the same kind of content to the same audience? You do not have a chance. Maybe you'll get lucky and I hope that you do, but the odds are you won't. So let's figure out, do all the things we just talked about so that you can actually have a chance to be successful.

[00:24:30] Michelle J Raymond: I'm just smiling for those that aren't watching this on video and listening to the podcast. I'm just sitting here with this funny smile on my face because thinking about my journey where I spotted my niche of Company Pages on LinkedIn very early. My sales brain kicked in. I was like, why is no one else talking about this?

[00:24:49] Michelle J Raymond: And so I did niche down and then I had that moment where I went the opposite and I just freaked out for a little bit and went, Oh, maybe I could do everything else. And then I went back and then I was like, Oh, I'm not sure about this thing. And then I freaked out about it for a little bit and ignored it. And then I was like, this is my thing. This is my tilt as you call it, that makes me stand out. This is how I got to stand on the stage at Social Media Marketing World. This is how I get doors open with so many clients. It's interesting about when I just stuck with it and kept doing my thing, not chopping and changing.

[00:25:23] Michelle J Raymond: What do you know? The results came through. My business grows. I get the opportunities from my ideal audience. They know, like, and trust me, like you've said a few times here. And so that confidence for me personally it's come and gone over time. Right now, I'm very solid in it, which is a great place to be.

[00:25:40] Michelle J Raymond: But if you're out there and you're struggling with this niche or you can't find it, or you need some help, honestly, it's worth investing time and money with someone else to help you find it. I didn't know the power of niching when I first started. And I thought if I cut off all of these other possibilities, then I, my business is going to suffer.

[00:26:01] Michelle J Raymond: And in fact, it's the complete and utter opposite is true. I think it's a hard lesson to learn in my experience, but so powerful when we get there and just be that one person for that one audience and just being in service of them. I think that's what builds loyalty because you're not chopping and changing because I don't know, AI is cool right now.

[00:26:22] Michelle J Raymond: Look at me, I can do prompts. No one expects me to give them AI prompts. That's not what you come to me for. So thank you for sharing that. Cause I think if you build that loyalty, the rest of the pieces start, falling into place.

[00:26:36] Michelle J Raymond: Now, Joe, I'm not going to call you the Grandfather, but you have been doing content marketing for a little while now, right. Now, once upon a time, as you said, you wrote a book, quite a few years ago, nearly, you know, it's coming up to probably 20 years ago now, if we think about it.

[00:26:53] Michelle J Raymond: When you look at the future of content entrepreneurship, what skills do you think that people who want to build a business around content, you know, these content entrepreneurs, what skills do you think that they need to focus on developing?

[00:27:07] Joe Pulizzi: Maybe this is obvious, but maybe it isn't, but you just talked about some of this. You're not alone in this. You're going to get your best ideas from your audience, but you have to listen. You have to say, I like to call them listening posts.

[00:27:21] Joe Pulizzi: So they're giving you all kinds of feedback. They're clicking on things. They're opening. They're downloading. They may say directly what they're doing, but you want to get that information in so you can make the pivot, whenever that comes, like you and I have both done.

[00:27:34] Joe Pulizzi: So set that up as a really good example, Jay Baer, who we both know and we're friends with. So Jay used to be in email marketing. He was an email marketing expert and he started doing some posts on social media and started to get tons of questions on social media.

[00:27:48] Joe Pulizzi: This is back in 2006, 2007, and he completely changed from email marketing to social media. And that served him very well. And he'd made that change because of the feedback he was getting from his audience.

[00:27:58] Joe Pulizzi: The best thing that you can do is actually listen and set up processes in your business. You can say, okay, what's resonating? What's not? Ask the questions too. It's okay. Ask them, what are their pain points? Send out surveys. I love doing little surveys all the time.

[00:28:12] Joe Pulizzi: Like I would love to get in front. Like, What are you struggling with? What's new? So you can figure out whether you're going in the right direction.

[00:28:18] Joe Pulizzi: The other thing that a lot of content entrepreneurs aren't doing, but I think will do is learn the art of acquisition. Now this might overwhelm a lot of people listening, but this is the hottest thing going on the content marketing side, because it's very hard to build a loyal audience.

[00:28:34] Joe Pulizzi: We're talking about this like it's easy. It's not easy, right? It takes a long time to do. And businesses are particularly bad at it because they like to talk about themselves. They're not consistent. They don't find a content tilt. They're targeting too many audiences at the same time.

[00:28:46] Joe Pulizzi: So what we recommend in a lot of cases and say, okay, this is the show you want to create to this audience. Is there one already available? Is there a show out there? Is there already a LinkedIn channel? Is there already a Facebook group? Is there already a podcast, YouTube, whatever, and write that down because that's a possibility that you don't have to create the thing from scratch. You could go and buy it and acquire it.

[00:29:08] Joe Pulizzi: And media companies, and I started in publishing, and this is maybe why I think this way, but when I used to do a PLL report, and this is back in 2002, 2003, and they'd say, okay Joe you're looking at your budget for next year, where are you going to get your growth?

[00:29:22] Joe Pulizzi: And I would always think, oh, okay, organic. I was like, okay, we're going to do, we're going to do this new thing. And we're going to do this podcast and this on social. We're going to sell this thing and create this product.

[00:29:31] Joe Pulizzi: And my mentor at the time would say, these are all really good ideas, but I only want half of your growth to come internally from organic stuff. I want the other half to come from acquisition. I'm like, really? It's like, yeah, because most of these ideas are being done by somebody else already.

[00:29:44] Joe Pulizzi: So go and form the relationships with the people doing that and you'll find that maybe there's an opportunity to buy something or acquire a newsletter, do whatever. And that served us really well at Content Marketing Institute.

[00:29:54] Joe Pulizzi: Cause we did three major acquisitions that probably added $4 or 5 million to our overall price when we sold in 2016. They were really critical to making things happen, but thinking about it strategically.

[00:30:06] Joe Pulizzi: You're a content creator, content entrepreneur. I would start to say, okay, who's competing with you in certain areas? Who's doing a thing to a particular audience that you feel you should be doing. So write down the newsletters, the things that competitors are doing, the YouTube shows, the podcasts, and write them down.

[00:30:22] Joe Pulizzi: And your first step is not to, you're not going to email and say, here's your thing for sale. The first thing you're going to do is let's do something is can we partner on a research report together? Can I have you on my podcast? Get to know them. Become friends with that person and that organization.

[00:30:36] Joe Pulizzi: And then you might see as it goes, maybe three months, six months, nine months down the road, there might be an opportunity to acquire. So I don't know if a lot of people are thinking that way, but that is a big future for content entrepreneurs, where you don't have to wait the two to three years to build an audience in a particular category.

[00:30:52] Joe Pulizzi: You can bring that in through acquisition. And some of these deals are not a lot of money. We did a deal once that was $15,000. Because the person just wanted to get rid of it.

[00:31:01] Joe Pulizzi: I'm like, okay, I'm happy to take that off your hands. Cause you never know the circumstances with a lot of creators. They just want to find a good home for some of these things that they treated as a passion project or a hobby.

[00:31:12] Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. You never know where something's just going to take off. Like it might've started as a little idea and then got out of hand and the person's left going, how did this thing turn into something so big that, I want to get back to just having some fun with things, but Joe like, You know, when I look around the world and, even here in Australia, we've got high inflation, there's, high interest rates, there's lots of financial stuff going on and, you know, I have conversations regularly with people who are struggling, maybe not monetizing things as much as they want as content entrepreneurs. So I always love to help them on the podcast, give them actionable tips. Maybe that they can have a, a go at different ways to help them monetize their content entrepreneurship.

[00:31:53] Michelle J Raymond: But based on your experience, what's some innovative strategies that you could recommend for these content creators that are looking to be, viable long term? Because as you said, there's a hundred thousand other people out there that are all doing exactly the same thing. Is the answer just getting back to basics, like we've covered here?

[00:32:13] Joe Pulizzi: I think in a lot of cases, we don't ask for the sale to the partners that are supporting us along the way. And that's the biggest thing.

[00:32:20] Michelle J Raymond: Louder in the back. Louder in the back.

[00:32:23] Joe Pulizzi: And it's tough, right? If you're not used to, Most content creators are very good at building an audience. They're not very good at sales and marketing, and that's where we fall down. So a lot of people can build an audience. It's not, you don't add products and services to that mix. So I would start there and figure out, okay.

[00:32:38] Joe Pulizzi: There's something that I really like. It's called a benefactor program. I've used it many times in my businesses and other creators have used it. So I'll talk about that because if you don't have an advertising sponsorship program that you're comfortable with, this is a really good way to go.

[00:32:54] Joe Pulizzi: So basically, let's say you have a thing. It's a newsletter. It's a website blog. It's a podcast, whatever the thing is. And you're struggling with getting any kind of revenue or the best type of the lowest hanging fruit revenue is advertising sponsorship, okay.

[00:33:10] Joe Pulizzi: So you're going to say, okay, I'm going to create a benefactor program and I'm going to limit it. So the first thing we want to do is create limited inventory. You're not going to offer this to everyone. You're going to say, I've got five spots and you're going to sell that five spots for whatever.

[00:33:23] Joe Pulizzi: It might be $10,000 a year, $15,000, $20,000 a year, whatever it is, something that you're a little bit uncomfortable to ask for, but will get you going and get in five strategic partners. These are partners that are probably already listening to your podcast. They're probably already downloaded your newsletter or opted into your newsletter.

[00:33:43] Joe Pulizzi: You already know these people, but you're not thinking about it this way. These are people that want to see you succeed. You're not using a media kit. This isn't anything with the CPM. This isn't anything complex. You're going to say, go out to these, this list that you're going to put together of possible partners that have a budget that want to support you and go out to them and say, Hey, I've got five spots available and only five spots and it's cost this much per year, whatever the case is.

[00:34:07] Joe Pulizzi: And you get 20 percent of all my inventory with my podcast, you're going to get 20 percent of all the episodes, 20 percent of all the space in your newsletter, whatever you're doing, 20 percent separate that by five. And now you've got. 12 months of revenue coming in with one product. And it gets it going because these people already want to support you.

[00:34:29] Joe Pulizzi: We did this when, when we launched Content Marketing Institute formally back in 2010 with the name and everything, I didn't have any money. Like I didn't have any more money to put into the website or the blog to get it going and I was like, how am I going to do this?

[00:34:45] Joe Pulizzi: So I cobbled together this benefactor program and we got, we got, I think, started with five companies. We then added it and the next year it became 10 companies paying a little bit more, but I said, would you pay $10,000 and this is what you get? And very quickly, I got that $50,000 and I was able to keep the company going and it all worked out really well.

[00:35:04] Joe Pulizzi: And I'm like, Oh my God, we just created our new first product. So that is what I would do. And I guess I would say it's okay to ask your friends. It's okay to ask people that maybe aren't quite the best fit yet, but people that want to see you succeed and companies that actually have a budget for this type of thing.

[00:35:22] Joe Pulizzi: Go after a company that's a multi million dollar company that wouldn't think that much of $10,000. Or maybe there's something like a research report or something that you can do for them or maybe it's a, be on a webinar with them or something you can do for them that they really need help with.

[00:35:36] Joe Pulizzi: You can do the swap. They become the benefactor. You're getting the money and now you're off to the races.

[00:35:40] Michelle J Raymond: And shout out to any of the podcast listeners who'd like to be a benefactor and get involved with the Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast. Cause I've got that idea. Thank you so much, Joe.

[00:35:51] Joe Pulizzi: Perfect.

[00:35:52] Michelle J Raymond: And I didn't ask Joe and everyone knows I've got the endorsement of Joe Pulizzi. Thank you.

[00:35:58] Joe Pulizzi: Perfect. I love it. See that's exactly the way to do it because, and look at, if you say do a media kit and go sell advertising, it's very daunting. And what does that mean? What is advertising? I was like, no, this is a little care package.

[00:36:10] Joe Pulizzi: You're a benefactor. You're going to support me and my business. And I'm going to help you in turn, any big opportunities that come along, I'm going to talk to you first because you're a benefactor, you're a supporter. You treat it. It's not a nonprofit, but you treat it like that kind of feel where they're supporting something bigger than just a business.

[00:36:28] Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. Now that has given me a whole wealth of ideas as has this whole show. You've been able to see my brain ticking over in the moment. I'm like, Michelle, concentrate where, you know, my brain has been going off like a popcorn machine during this whole conversation.

[00:36:43] Michelle J Raymond: Now I would love to talk to you all day, but I want to be respectful of your time. But Joe, I'm excited. I saw, you've just done a post that you have a new book coming out. Can you tell the audience about that?

[00:36:55] Michelle J Raymond: , I'm going to obviously, when it comes out, share the link so that they can get ahold of that and connect with you on LinkedIn, because if you're not following Joe and you're not, a subscriber to his newsletter yet, you're going to be, but yeah, tell us about the book. I'm excited for you. Cause it's not your first rodeo.

[00:37:13] Joe Pulizzi: No, this'll be, I think book number eight and this one's special because first of all, it's called The Content Entrepreneur. So it's the whole idea of what we've been talking about here. It's don't just be a content creator. You want to be the content entrepreneur.

[00:37:26] Joe Pulizzi: There's things that you have to come together with and processes to make this thing work. You can go to thecontententrepreneur.com But what's really special is we have our, I have my own little membership group that started with our event, CEX Content Entrepreneur Expo.

[00:37:41] Joe Pulizzi: And that came together last year we met and we said, we're going to write a book together. So this is written by me and 32 other amazing content entrepreneurs to bring this together. So that's why it's a little bit special because it was a group effort. We brought it together and now the book's available. You could buy it right now. We are launching in April. But everything works and I'm very excited about it.

[00:38:04] Michelle J Raymond: I will make sure that I put all of those details in the show notes. Joe it has been amazing. This, the conversation was everything that I expected it to be and then some, and of course I have now got a long list of things I'm gonna be doing when I listen back to this replay so that I can really look in my own business about how do I take advantage of everything that you've just shared so generously.

[00:38:27] Michelle J Raymond: So I really appreciate you coming on the show. It's just been such a cool conversation and I wish we could talk for days, but feel free to come back any other time. This is an outstanding invitation. Anytime you want to talk to the audience.

[00:38:40] Joe Pulizzi: Let's, let's plan a part two. It was an honor being on Michelle. I really appreciate it. So I'll just plan a couple of months. We'll do a part two of this and talk about some of the things we missed.

[00:38:49] Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. It's amazing. So thank you everybody that has joined us. Yeah, I hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as I have.

[00:38:56] Michelle J Raymond: If you have. Reach out, connect with us. Let us know that you enjoyed the episode so that, we can make sure that we keep delivering more ideas for you on how to use social media to grow your B2B. And so, yeah, until next week, everyone.

[00:39:10] Michelle J Raymond: Cheers.