← Insights Unlocked
Insights Unlocked
Build your Plan B: How content entrepreneurship can unlock freedom and meaning
00:43:52
Joe Pulizzi shares how creators and marketers can build freedom and wealth through content entrepreneurship and audience-first strategies.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode I'm joined by Joe Polizzi, best selling author, entrepreneur and the godfather of content marketing. We dive into his latest book, Burn the Playbook and talk about how marketers, creators, anyone really can build a life of freedom, meaning and ownership by embracing their tilt, focusing their investments of time and building an audience. Three lessons applicable to both individuals and brands. Enjoy the show.
- [00:35]
Podcast Host/Intro Voice
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
- [00:54]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, principal Content Marketing Manager at User Testing and our guest today is Joe Pulizzi. Joe is a best selling author, podcaster and one of the pioneers of content marketing. He's the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Tilt, creator of the Content Inc. Model and author of the new book Burn the Playbook, which challenges us to ditch outdated business rules and build something that's truly our own. Welcome to the show, Joe.
- [01:22]
Joe Pulizzi
Nathan, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
- [01:26]
Nathan Isaacs
I have an intro question here that I will ask you, but before I do that, I was just talking with Ross Simmons for the podcast. His episode will be coming in a few weeks after yours and he had a question. I asked him what he would ask you. My question would be how do you.
- [01:47]
Joe Pulizzi
Maintain personal brand excellence for decades plus and continue to get excited about the industry? I know why I do, but I'm curious to know other people now that I'm old man marketer trying.
- [02:04]
Nathan Isaacs
Right, right. As you said, I think it was in this past episode of this old marketing. You're now the longest running show because everyone else is dead.
- [02:13]
Joe Pulizzi
Everyone else. We're the longest running marketing news podcast because everyone decided to stop or they died. Which I don't know how you want to take that. I appreciate the question by Ross. It's funny because I get asked this question a lot. It's like since the exit, my wife and I own Content Marketing Institute. We had a very successful exit in 2016 and after that, you know, you kind of go searching for, okay, what do I do now? Where is my how do I find meaning? And now, almost a decade from that, I, I believe in my heart that I've been put on this earth to help human beings find meaning, find their own freedom, find wealth, and whatever that means to them. And so I'm just trying to share and be helpful. That's really all. I'm so that's. So I've got all these newsletters I'm doing, I've got these two podcasts that I'm doing. I'm writing a new business book when I probably should be writing a fiction novel like my wife wants me to write. I'm like, well, where can I make the most impact in the world in a positive way? And I believe that is through the things that I'm doing and helping creators and marketers sort of find what, what their meaning is to them and, and how to, how to find their time, freedom, and how to build things and own things and, and kind of separate themselves from the rat race that is the 9 to 5 workforce. So that's kind of where I'm at. And I think I'm. I mean, we just, I just went to an event, you know, CEX Content Entrepreneur Expo, and I got to see people firsthand. And sometimes, Nathan, you don't know if you're doing a good job or not. Like, sometimes you don't get all that feedback, but then you see people, you give them, you know, you're getting hugs. They're, they're crying, they're. They're saying that you changed their lives and whatever, and part of you don't believe that, but it's. Something's working. So as long as I'm getting those hugs and people are saying, thank you, Joe, for being there, I know that I'm doing something good. So that's, that's why I'm doing it. I'm just trying to be helpful.
- [04:14]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, and since the exit and, and you went through Tilt and cex, you're really kind of going into a new group of people that, you know, this, this idea of content marketing for many years was just, you know, the audience was other content marketers. Right. And now it's really entrepreneurs, it's creators and stuff like that. I'm sure there are just new people, you know, who weren't even born yet when you got started with all this, that are finding your messages and your lessons and stuff like that and getting excited about it.
- [04:48]
Joe Pulizzi
I'm trying. Yeah. It's actually been an interesting shift to go from the content marketing guy. I mean, on stage for the last 10 years, when I go out and do a speech, I've been announced as, as the godfather of content marketing. And I played into it, it did the whole thing, and now I'm like, well, what, what do I stand for now? And it's, it's basically, oh, no, I'm. I'm trying to help creators Find, you know, meaning and, and purpose and wealth through ownership. That's really what I'm doing. It's just not that much different, believe it or not, because on the marketing side, I've all. At least from, you know, the definition of content marketing, I said, okay, what we want to do is build our own audience, and then we monetize that audience in many different ways. It's. We're saying the same thing. Except you're. You. You're not doing it for just a marketing department, and you're not doing it for, you know, to drive different types of roi From a marketing standpoint. You are trying to build a business, but honestly, it's the same model, Nathan. You know that. It's the same exact thing. It just depends on how you're coming at it.
- [05:52]
Nathan Isaacs
It's so interesting. And as you were saying that, I was thinking, like, you know, I'm a fanboy, knowing you as the godfather of content marketing, but this went. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but when you realize that other family members call your grandfather something else, right? I called my grandfather Grampy, and then all of a sudden I'm hearing other people calling him something else.
- [06:15]
Joe Pulizzi
Pop. Pop.
- [06:15]
Nathan Isaacs
I'm like, what? Who's that? And this is what it is, right? The creators are calling you something else, the Godfather of Create creators or whatever it might be.
- [06:24]
Joe Pulizzi
I'm just, yeah, and I'm just a little pawn in this business. I'm just. You know what? I. It's interesting. There's so many amazing creators, and they're doing incredible things. Like even we talked about on the Soul Marketing podcast about the SNL adding their new team of all these creators this year that, you know, like Cam Patterson and a bunch of other ones. I'm like, this is nuts. So I get into this side. It is very hard to stand out, but I'm sort of doing it by. Hey, you know, I. I started in this when. When blogging was the thing. You know, people were just getting domains and we were starting to build blogs and RSS feeds and that kind of thing. And so you feel really old, but I feel like I've made enough mistakes out there to tell these creators, hey, man, you know, this is. Yeah, you're doing great on Tic Tac Tick Tock. You're doing great on YouTube, but you can't control those algorithms, so don't get sucked in to that part of it. Let's figure out, how do you actually build a model that's sustainable? How do you drive new products and services from that? That you can, you can have your own time during the day, you can still make a life with your family, you could still travel the world, you could still do all these things and be a creator at the same time. Which is honestly what I tell marketers, too. I'm just like, hey, be careful. A lot of stuff going on. A lot of my marketing friends right now are losing their jobs. I mean, I, I'm. I'm very, very concerned for a lot of my people on the marketing side. Well, you got a lot of CMOs, and we could talk about it. We got a lot of CMOs that are making decisions based on press releases and what they're. What their CEOs saying, good or not, whether they should or not. They're saying, we don't need these types of marketing people anymore because we've got, we've got AI, we've got Chat GPT doing all this work for us. So. And it's a cool thing, right? If you're on the core, if you're a public company and all you worry about is your quarterly results, it's good to say, hey, we let go 10% of our workforce and then the stock goes up. So it's unfortunate we're in that environment right now. So I'm trying to sort of help a lot of my friends figure out, okay, even if you have a job, you got, you've got to figure out another path out of here. Because where we used to have a career in marketing, we don't. We want to use that marketing as experience to take us to another place. And that other place is probably not working for a company. I, I'm just. And I'm just calling it like it is. I don't want that to be true. I'm just saying this is what I'm seeing, and we need to prepare now. So I'm trying to create the sense of urgency for marketers to say, okay, that's fine. You've been in this position for three, five, or ten years. Great. It's almost like when I got into publishing in the year 2000, and I worked at B2B publishing company, Pent Media, and I can't tell you how many people that worked there were there for 20, 25, 30 years. And we went through the 2001, 2002 recession, and they were all gone. And it's like. And that's how fast it can happen. And I sort of see that happening again. And I'm just trying to prepare people.
- [09:29]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, There's a. Yeah. And folks should listen to an episode you did. And I guess it might have been a special episode, but this idea of your plan B should be your plan A type of thing. And, and we'll follow up and we'll talk about it more as the interview goes along. It's definitely something I think about. I was already kind of saying, like, my tilt is all this stuff and, and, and I guess in a way, the marketers have all the skill sets to be entrepreneurs. They know how to create them, you.
- [09:58]
Joe Pulizzi
Know.
- [10:01]
Nathan Isaacs
Set themselves apart in, in their messaging and what's, you know, their differentiators are and how to find your audience and all that kind of stuff. And we will talk about it. The, you know, like, we've, we've already addressed. You've written a lot of books. I have a lot. A couple of your books behind me here. You know, you can virtually autograph them. But you said that Burn the Playbook is one that matters most to you. Why this book and why now?
- [10:28]
Joe Pulizzi
I selfishly wrote this for my kids. I tell them things all the time. My kids, by the way, are 22 and 24, so they're, you know, they're not little kids anymore. But I, you know, I have my dadisms that I. And I, of course, they're, they're very content marketing related or, or entrepreneurship related. And I'm, I'm very involved in what's going on, the AI scene. And I'm trying to tell them. I'm like, this, this is where I see things going. And they're like, oh, yeah, dad, yeah, yeah, whatever. You know, you get that a lot. And I really just said, I, I have so many things to tell you. And I wrote it down in this book. And what was great about it is I said, I, I wrote this book so that you would read it. Would you two read this for me and would you give me your input on it? And by the way, one of the greatest things I've ever done, because they did, and they took it seriously, probably with some coaxing from their mother, but they're. And then we went out to Olive Garden. That's where they wanted to go. And we did a whole book review and they both had their notes. And as a, you know, I get a little emotional about it because you're like, oh my God. Like, they took it. They took, they took the assignment seriously. And they gave me some great feedback, which I implemented into the book. But it's basically just, how do you build a life of freedom and meaning in Today's crazy, crazy world of all the stuff we have going on. And so I got to share that with them. Now, whether they decide to take any of that, that's not up to me, but at least I got to say it in word form, if you will. And then I'm like, okay, well, there's a lot of people that need to read this book, I believe, because they, you know, there's a. People that are in high school, there are people that are in college just looking for something to do or what, what, you know, what's they're going to be. Their career, if a career is a thing anymore. And then there are people like my friends that are 40 and 50 years old that are getting laid off and they don't have, they have no clue what to do. So. Or if you're in a job with zero satisfaction, what do you do then? Life is short. Let's go. Right? You're concerned about, you know, providing for your family, but at the same time, you don't want to go to work nine to five every day and do something that's meaningless. So, yeah, so that's why Burn the Playbook was created. It's the shortest book I've ever written. It's 200 pages. But it, it like when you read through it, it reads like a tick tock feed because everything is so short. They're in short. And I did that purposely. I'm like this thought, this thought, this thought. So you could take it away and you could read one chapter. You get four or five different thoughts, thoughts. And there's all kinds of worksheets in the back so that you can really do something with it. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping it makes some impact. Again, trying to be helpful. I'm, I'm not, I'm not trying to make any money off of this thing. I just want to, to get out to a bunch of people and to say, hey, look, this helped me change my life for the better. If somebody came up to me, Nathan, and said, wow, I'm able to spend more time with my family because of this, I'm like, that's it. That's. That's all I can ask for. And I think that's what that book can do.
- [13:39]
Nathan Isaacs
The. For someone who's listening, you know, in our audience, you know, marketers, it's designers, people like that, product leaders within large companies and they're listening to this and like, yeah, I want to do this, but I also, there's a risk. I can't just go Quit tomorrow. How do they, or they're saying, how do I do both? How do I start building plan B to be plan A, but also be successful in my business here and, and bring some of that, bring some of that entrepreneurship to, you know, the corporate life, Anything they can, you know, what's your advice for them to uncover and express their, their tilt within those systems.
- [14:23]
Joe Pulizzi
So if, you know, we talked a little bit about AI and the innovation that's going on and the revolution or whatever you want to call it, but there's a lot of change happening. So I believe that marketers in a role with any size company are at risk. Job security as we knew it, and this has happened for a long time, but it's speeding up, right? Job security is dead. So I guess you have to measure risk. I mean, I, I talk.
- [14:54]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, not just risk, risk, risk also in the world, right? Yeah, like, well, yeah.
- [15:01]
Joe Pulizzi
Yes, absolutely.
- [15:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah.
- [15:05]
Joe Pulizzi
We are, we are on this earth for a very short period of time. Even if you live to be a hundred, it's a very short period of time. What do you want to do with it? I just posted on LinkedIn because I'm all crazy about people spending time on social media. And I said, okay, the, the average time that an American spends on social media is between two and five hours. Let's just take the low end. Two hours. You take two hours. If you're between, if you start at age 20 and you go to age 80, you know, you take the time. You're basically talking about five full years of life. 24, seven, five full years of life or, you know, 30 years of working a nine to five job, just two hours a day. These things add up. What could you do with that time back? And that's all I'm trying to say is what could you do with that time back? If you're going to work every day now, by the way, if you're listening and you're fulfilled and you love your, your, your, your CEO and you love your team and you're finding meaning, great. I, I, I'm, I love that for you. I'm not telling you to leave. I'm just saying it works great until it doesn't, and then you're out trying to look for something. So to answer your question, Nathan, I think everybody, yes, get that side hustle. Find what we call a tilt. A tilt is your unique angle on something. What makes you unique. That you, you basically, you create something that new and different to somebody that makes you irreplaceable. So what, what is that for you. And then you can start building an audience on the side, doing something that could be a TikTok, could be a newsletter, could be a video series, webinar series, could be an event, newsletter subset, all these types of things, podcast, all these things. So you build, you start building an audience on the side, whatever that is around something that you have a unique angle. It might not be your passion, by the way, it's just something where you have more expertise than the regular person has and you can communicate it in a way that's helpful to people. Great. You start building this little thing and at some point it takes a while to build an audience. It takes sometimes two, three, four years to do it. So now is a great time to start. So if something does happen, you can make that side hustle, your full time hustle. If some, if something does not happen and you build that audience, then you slowly switch that. You say, okay, this is going to be my full time thing. What was your side hustle? And then you do the other thing part time to get some revenue in. I mean, that's what most people end up doing. It's like if you look at Justin Welsh, who does the Saturday solopreneur, very successful multimillionaire now, he made that transition. He started as a little side project, newsletter project, built it up over time and now, you know, he doesn't have to work a 9 to 5 job anymore. So that's sort of how it happens. So I would say for those people that are in a job, write down what are, what are the things that interest you or you're better than most at like. And I, I always, you know, write down, oh, well, I know publishing and marketing and I, I know more about Billy Joel than most people and I know more about Cleveland sports and sports memorabilia and speech therapy because my oldest is on the autism spectrum and those types of things. And I write those out. And then you start looking at it and say, well, wow, what could I communicate on a regular basis? That if I lean into my crazy a little bit, that I could build an audience, if that's how it happens. And you never get it right the first time, but you start tweaking it and sooner or later you'll find your niche and you'll find what works and you'll find an audience and you go from there. And that's how ultimately Content Marketing Institute was born. It just took three years to really find what that would be. And that was ultimately our, you know, our generational wealth event that happened. So that's what I would say. Start the side hustle. Start it today. Now's. Now's the best time to start. There's never a good time. They'll. There you go.
- [19:00]
Nathan Isaacs
Or the best time to do it is right now. Right, Whatever.
- [19:03]
Joe Pulizzi
I'm sorry. Best time to do it is right now.
- [19:05]
Nathan Isaacs
Oh, no. Yeah.
- [19:07]
Joe Pulizzi
Let's go. Let's go. I'm excited for anybody listening to this. Let's go. You could do it. You'll. You'll make a lot of wrong choices and that they'll. They'll add up into the right one sooner or later.
- [19:19]
Nathan Isaacs
We, we started this off with a question from Ross Simmons, and, And he. That's how he got started. He was writing a fantasy football league blog or whatever it might have been.
- [19:31]
Joe Pulizzi
Oh, really?
- [19:32]
Nathan Isaacs
And got started doing that, you know, back, you know, in. Before college, you know, back in high school or something like that. I hope I'm getting that correct. But I think back to some of these old, you know, these pioneers of content marketing. Right. Gary Vee was just doing it to sell wine. Right. Market. Is it Marcus Sheridan, Mark.
- [19:54]
Joe Pulizzi
Marcus Sheridan was river pools and spots guy.
- [19:56]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, it was just fine. Maybe they're not passionate about it, but they knew more about it than anyone else and, and built that audience over time and, and, and leverage that over time. So, yeah, you're right.
- [20:08]
Joe Pulizzi
That's an important. And I don't want to cut you off, Nathan, but that's so important to think about because people are often say, I've got to go into my passion. You've got to look. When you start looking at that, you find what your tilt is. You have to realize that maybe your passion isn't monetizable. Like, if your passion is butterflies, like, you got to think really hard about, okay, well, if I create content around butterflies, how do I monetize it? And how do I bring sponsors in and how do people want to pay for something and, you know, those types of. But then if you go. If you go to. Oh, well, maybe. Maybe if I. Maybe it's. Even though I, I'm. I love butterflies. But what I really know is, you know, sheet metal construction. And I know more about that because my, I grew up in the business and whatever, and if I find my knowledge of AI and sheet metal construction and there's going to be this whole new thing, you're like, oh, my God, you. You combine that together, you become irreplaceable to a group of people. I mean, and, and by the way, you don't need as many. So that, that's the type of thing I would say. And then you know what, what happens is, is when you do a really good job and you build an audience that knows, likes and trusts you over this thing that you're not passionate about, you can become very passionate about that new thing that you're building because you realize that, hey, this is your ticket out. This is your ticket to freedom and meaning and generational wealth.
- [21:30]
Nathan Isaacs
As you are exploring the things that you're really good at and you're developing an audience, how do you know if the audience is getting you? How can you, how do you know you're doing the right thing by your audience? How do you know if that message is resonating? How do you test those messages? You know, like, what's that interaction like with your audience you can use?
- [21:54]
Joe Pulizzi
Well, first of all, just look at the vanity metrics. Yes, you, hey, are you getting people to open your newsletter? Are you getting people to like the thing on YouTube? Are people commenting? You get some traffic. You know those types of things. You, you build them all together into vanity and you're like, okay, you get a gut feeling. But the best way to do it. And the thing that comes to mind, Nathan, is the example from. Is it Unbreakable? What's the one, the movie with Bruce Willis where he's the superhero. Is it breakable? Something. I can't think of it. Samuel L. Jackson said it too.
- [22:36]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, it might be Unbreakable.
- [22:38]
Joe Pulizzi
He's got this. He, he's got the pot. He feels in his gut that he's got these superpowers, but doesn't know for sure. And he has to go in the middle of all these people. It's somewhere in New York. I think it's the train station in New York. And he holds out his arms and he starts getting touched by these people. And then he realizes that he can see what they're going to do and he has the superpower. That's what, that's the thing that I can. I recommend to everyone. I did not know that I was making any impact with my content marketing blog until 2009. And I took a trip. Somebody asked me to do a speaking event in Brussels and I went there and I got face to face contact with people that were telling me that their lives were changed because of something that I wrote or the book or whatever. And I had no idea. I'm like, oh my God. So what happens is you put your content out there. Don't be afraid to be wrong. Get it out there. You get some Feedback, you get the likes, you get the vanity metrics, but at some point go see the people in person. There's gotta be an industry trade event. There's got to be something where you're around people that have, has seen or get or by the way, if you don't create your own event of the people that are in your audience and get out with some small workshop, something where you're in front of people and you can talk to the people. Content marketing world 2011. I remember I was there, I'm like, oh my God, I got so much feedback, good and bad. It's the face to face, it's the face to face stuff. So however you can get that feedback. And again, again, like, yeah, if you get it, if you get it online, if it's through a comment or whatever, if you get it through surveys, all those things, you set up these listening posts, they're all great. Set up the listing posts wherever you can. Listen to that, get the feedback. It will tell you where you're going, right and wrong. But at the end of the day, you have to get in front of a human being and they will tell you what's going on.
- [24:38]
Nathan Isaacs
And I guess I don't have a follow up there, but I was just thinking the, from this idea, you know, you, you went into tilt, then you launched the cex and then you go from like, this is not the same audience as Content Marketing World was. And so you're, you're launching this event and then you go from, you know, was this, what year are you on now on cex?
- [25:06]
Joe Pulizzi
It's four. Yeah, we just had fourth year.
- [25:08]
Nathan Isaacs
So how do you progress from that first year, the second year to know whether you should do it or not? And, and how. What did you change based on the feedback you got?
- [25:19]
Joe Pulizzi
What was interesting was crazy enough. So yeah, I took a sabbatical in 2018. I didn't do anything. Had greatest year. Spent time with the family, my parents, everything was, was wonderful. Wrote my novel the Will to Die, that did pretty fairly well. And I was just going to become a novelist. The was it. I was, I was done with the content marketing thing. Then Covid comes and for whatever reason, I started getting more into it. And the reason why was I got texts and calls and instant messages from friends who lost their jobs, who were having trouble, who wanted to get into content creation as a business. They wanted to build their own media company like we did for Content Marketing Institute. Started giving this advice and I'm like, oh well, maybe I should do another version of Content Ink, the book, do that version that's like, well, if as long as I'm doing that, I might as well build a whole business around let's do a newsletter. That newsletter became the Tilt newsletter. I said, well, as long as I'm doing that, might as well do an event. Now. My thought, I thought this event was really going to target young creators. Like, these are the ones that really want it. But what I learned when we got to Phoenix, Arizona for the first one, most of the people in attendance were over 40. They were in their second or third versions of their career and this was their out. I'm like, oh, this is our audience. This is our like Gen X. I had no idea. They're basically. It was the content marketers that I knew from Content Marketing World and Content Marketing Institute that were looking to do something different outside of marketing. So that whole thing happened. I would have never have known that by, by really just looking at some of the data that we were getting on the newsletter and whatnot. So and so that's changed everything. So we changed the programming a little bit. We have different speakers, we have a lot of second career things. We had a lot of things that I know on legal and setting up your business and accounting and, you know, running a business. So it's half entrepreneurial, half marketing. And you know, you bring it into content entrepreneurship. So yeah, so we created that event and again, you take all that feedback. I love those events because all I do is try to soak in the feedback. What speeder did you like? What'd you get the most out of? And then what you do is you realize the educational programming is really important. But the number one reason people come is to network. They find new connections that help them build their business for the future. And that's what most of these events do.
- [27:51]
Nathan Isaacs
So, all right, the you have something you've said in past episodes and where you know in the past and and I want to get your answer onto this for both people who are working on their plan B to make it a plan A as well as those people who just want to do better in their marketing roles and that is in content marketing roles. You know, advice to me to make this podcast better. Nathan Isaacs for user testing and you say, what if your content disappeared? Would anyone miss it? And so what's your what should marketers rethink about that strategy to ensure they're creating genuinely valuable human censored content?
- [28:37]
Joe Pulizzi
It's very difficult sometimes working for a marketing organization that doesn't want to take Risks with their content. I mean, we've had, you know, fill in the gap content for how long? Oh, we need this blog post over here. We need some YouTube videos, we need whatever. So. But none of that works. We're just checking the box on some of those things. So I think as a marketer today, you have to be honest and say, how am I going to make an impact in a specific group of people that buy our products and services? How are we going to stand out? So you really have to lean into your crazy. And your crazy is not what you sell. Your crazy is what you stand for. And so what do you stand for? And then what is that? And you build a show around it. So that's what I want to see marketers like, okay, commit to a show, don't commit to a campaign. The campaign is not a commitment. A campaign always stops. So what is your show? Is that the podcast? Is that the TikTok show? Is it? It's a regular thing that happens every month, every week, every day, whatever it is. And you're going to deliver that to a group of people, hopefully they'll become know like and trust you. And there's some kind of behavior change. And that behavior change as a marketer, you want them to buy more of your stuff or stay longer as customers, or buy more as customers, whatever that goal is. So you still have a marketing goal and you go forward with it and have that be your thing. So where. So I guess I would fight back. If you are in a marketing role and saying, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be on every platform. Maybe in some of those other ones, we're just listening. We, you know, you got a nice little profile, you're responding to things. But on these one or two platforms is where we are actually creating our content and trying to build an audience. So that might be a podcast or a regular newsletter or something like that. Well, where is your show? So if you don't have a show right now, you're in trouble. You need a regular thing that's going to compel people to want to follow you and will separate you from everyone else. So I would just make sure that you're doing that. And if you're hearing crickets with your show, you're not pushing the envelope enough. And you have to. I mean, we're not only competing against. You're not only competing with other marketers in your space, you're competing with creators who are doing this 24 7. And you created with a whole, whole lot of new creators that are AI bots that are going to be. I mean, the, the, the newest influencers out there aren't even people. So we got a lot of, we got a lot of ways. So if there's anything that we can do as a human being, maybe we can differentiate ourselves and be a little bit crazy and lean into that and you push that game and then it'll work after a while. But you do have to get back to your CMO or your VP of marketing and say, look, we need to take a chance. You need to lay out, look, we're not just doing the blog posts anymore. We're not just doing the articles. We're not just doing the videos that get nothing. We have to do something to get attention and build an audience because what we're doing is not working well.
- [31:52]
Nathan Isaacs
And I think it goes into something else you've said, which is this idea of a mini sabbatical stopping and doing some deep thinking about what is that thing? Right. What is your crazy? And crazy doesn't have to be crazy. It just means what makes you unique and different. Right. And that's.
- [32:10]
Joe Pulizzi
Right.
- [32:12]
Nathan Isaacs
And lean into that and build that plan around that. I guess when and, and I guess this could happen for the individual, for Nate Isaacs, but also for user testing. Right. User testing does this and we figure out how do we differentiate and, and not just be the same noise, but Nathan Isaacs does it too. I have all these skills, but what is my real thing that I can.
- [32:37]
Joe Pulizzi
Yeah, I mean, if the, the more. Yeah, the, the more general you go, the harder you're going to. The harder it's going to be to break through.
- [32:45]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah.
- [32:46]
Joe Pulizzi
So. And again, where I think a lot of people mess up with content marketing is they feel that their, their content marketing thing, their show has to be for all their customers. No, it does not. It's for a small group of prospects or customers or stakeholders. And you focus on, okay, who is that? What are their informational needs? What keeps them up at night? I'm going to match that exactly with what our expertise and our differentiation is. And then you put that together, that's your tilt. And, and then that expels some kind of a content mission. What is. It's like an editorial mission. I'm delivering what kind of content to what kind of people and what's the outcome? What are, what am I trying to deliver? What. How am I going to help them live a better life or get a better job? That's just some kind of statement. I help freelance designers use AI to create business Plans that help them with their time freedom. I don't know. I'm just made that up. But whatever it is, right, whatever you do, you put that down, you make sure your team knows about it, and you say, boom, this is what we're doing. We wake up every day to do this. And if we do this, our theory, our marketing hypothesis is that they will engage in more of our stuff and they'll end up subscribing to our newsletter. And those that subscribe to our newsletter over six months, we find that they end up buying more stuff or staying longer as customers or whatever the case is. So that's where, you know, that's where you kind of get into the marketing of. Why is it. Why would your VP of marketing be open to this kind of stuff? Well, they would because this is the way we communicate with real people, and real people behave this way. And if we do this, we'll break through and we'll see sales, savings or sunshine. That's, you know, content marketing. Sales. Am I driving sales? Is it saving the company money in some way? Or sunshine, are we keeping our customers more loyal?
- [34:32]
Nathan Isaacs
All right, as we wrap up, if you had. And I think, I think there is one. One thing that people should be doing, but if you're gonna. If anyone's listening, what's the one thing they should do? Start doing today? And, and, and what would that be? You've already said. We said 100 times.
- [34:54]
Joe Pulizzi
Yeah, no, no, I'll. I'll differ. I mean, I've said a lot. Yeah, we've talked about a lot here. I. This is my favorite one right now. My favorite one is to create before you consume every day. So my. What most people do, not just marketers, most human beings, they get up in the morning and they start consuming somebody else's stuff. Your list, your morning brew or New York Times or whatever your paper is, or you're watching the news or you're scrolling through social media, you're helping somebody else's business model. What I want you to do is get up and whether it's in a journal and you're writing one sentence or you've got. You're dictating into your phone, or whatever you're doing, you're creating something first before you help somebody else's business model. So I would say if I would ask you to do one thing, it's that. And do that for 30 days, it will change your life. And you'll. You'll start building a habit around that. And then you'll realize that the Better. Best thing that you're doing every day is waking up and creating something that's going to make the world a better place.
- [36:02]
Nathan Isaacs
This is how the book was written, right? 60. 61. Is that what you said?
- [36:06]
Joe Pulizzi
The 6061? Yeah. 6. Yes. Basically, I took one goal and I. And for, for 60 days in a row, I would. I would take 60 hours and create. Create what became Burn the Playbook. And you could do that over any kind of period, right? It's like, what's your goal? Your big, hairy, audacious goal? Mine was, I'm gonna write this book and I'm gonna do it for the next 60 days and for the. And it works really, really well if you, like, you get up and you know exactly what you're doing. And by the way, if you do it, you don't. You don't have to be an hour. I think an hour is a good time period to dedicate, but Even if it's 20 minutes, you can make an impact. And the reason why I like 60 is because 60 days is about the amount of time that you start to learn a habit. You get in and it's. It becomes automatic for you because once you get to 61, you're like, oh, yeah, of course. This is what I'm doing. Or you. If you run or you work out or you eat right, you need to get to about two months. So that's why I like that time period.
- [37:05]
Nathan Isaacs
The. And I think I, I have two points here as. Do invest in yourself first, right? Do this for yourself first, but you can also do it within your work. What's the crazy idea that you would say, well, they're never going to let me do that. And, and do that for that 20 minutes each day for 60 days or whatever it might be, and then go back to your boss and say, hey, here's this new video I created on the history of whatever it might be. The, the other point. And, and, and I. One of my takeaways from this is the importance of a process, importance of routine that you need to kind of do. This is not just going to happen. And, and you're a sports fan. You, you, you often have your conversations with Robert about NFL and all this kind of stuff. I just watched one of these short little videos that Eli. Well, the Manning brothers are doing with their Omaha productions, also a great content channel that they're, you know, creating this brand around. But they were interviewing Nick Saban, the former head coach for Alabama Football, who said, my process is that you just have to commit Every day, you just have to do it in practice, you have to do it in the game. Even if you're playing the. The worst team out there, you have to bring it 100. Because if you don't do it, then you're not going to do it in the big games.
- [38:23]
Joe Pulizzi
You're not going to do it.
- [38:25]
Nathan Isaacs
So it was, it was something. There's no secret.
- [38:29]
Joe Pulizzi
It's, it's, it's. No, I mean, what you learn. I mean, I'm a big fan of Brian Tracy and goal setting and those types of things. And what I have learned over the years through my, as I get older is that most people don't set goals that they write down and they review on a regular basis. And if you are somebody that sets goals and you read it in the morning and you review that and you live by that, and that's what you do, and you believe that you can accomplish these things, you're ahead of the 99% of the world doesn't do this. We just get sucked into daily living and putting out this fire and that. And by the time you're like 10 years have gone by and you haven't accomplished anything, it's like, it's not rocket science. What do you want? And if you don't, if you can't write it down, you can't have it. What. What do you want? You write that thing down and you go after it and you what? I hate to say this, because it's not like a voodoo thing or anything, but like, successful people actually believe they can accomplish the most audacious things. Like, and, and like, when I wrote down in 2008, I said, oh, I. I'm going to sell my company in 2015 for $15 million is the most audacious thing I could write down because we were losing $100,000 that year. I had no, no revenues. I had no content marketing, wasn't even a thing. It's silly. And, and by the way, I had a lot of people that told me that, but I was like, no, no, I get up in the morning, I said, okay, what am I going to do? I got to get to that. I got, I got to go, what am I going to do today? What am I going to do today? And by the way, you just, it just. You create your own reality doing that. So that's where, I mean, it's just so you are, you are what you believe about yourself, and then you end up doing those things and you make it a reality. It sounds so like, sorcery. Ish. It's like you. When I talk to people about it, they're like, what? You can't do that. I said, no, you can make this a reality. I was like, what do you want? Do you want to be a millionaire? Do you want to run a marathon? What do you want to do? Do you want a happy family? Do you want to go travel the world? Okay, write it down. Let's go. Let's set a timetable to it. Okay.
- [40:54]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, yeah.
- [40:55]
Joe Pulizzi
So we can measure it. Let's go. And you make it a reality. And believe it or not, most people, if they don't make it by that day, they make it sometime very close to after that because that's your purpose.
- [41:06]
Nathan Isaacs
It wasn't 2015. It was 2016.
- [41:09]
Joe Pulizzi
I know. I lost it. Yeah, I did it a year later. But you know what? We got there.
- [41:18]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah. Joe, I just want to say thank you. It's like I've had my own personal episode of this old marketing today, and I've really enjoyed our conversation. How does someone learn more about you? The new book? How do they sign up for your podcast or sign up for your newsletter?
- [41:36]
Joe Pulizzi
Thank you. Go to jopolizzi.com, it's P U L I Z Z I.com and you can get my podcast there. Content Inc. And this old marketing. You see all that? The new book, Burn the Playbook, is right on the website. You can buy direct from me before it goes on, on Amazon and all that other stuff. And then probably the number one thing is right on the home page is my newsletter, Orange Letter. I send it out every two weeks. It's. We talk about this kind of stuff. Right. It's just I cover this if you get a lot of different ways you can get. Joe, if that's what you want. I'm just trying to be helpful. So if you like it an audio version, you know, the podcasts are great. If you wanted a word version, you get the. You can get the Burn the Playbook or the. Or the newsletter, but that's. Yeah, I'm just trying to be out there and accessible for as many people as possible.
- [42:25]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, thank you again. I think also recommend people check out this old marketing podcast, watch it on YouTube. So you can watch what Joe and Robert are doing with their commercial break.
- [42:40]
Joe Pulizzi
With their AI Commercials that are starting to take off. Terrible is. Is that people are looking for the commercials more than the actual content of the podcast, which is. Which is a bit of a concern.
- [42:50]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, it's. It's great to see you're just tinkering around with it. But all these skills will be applied somewhere else, right? I mean the the already the songs are getting better, the videos are getting better. The new tools out there, Nano Banana is going to make it even better. So what I'm interested to watch this progress and then if you're a marketer out there, you're a creator. This is an example of how you can do use AI in a fun, exciting way. That's right. Joe, thank you for your time again.
- [43:21]
Joe Pulizzi
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [43:24]
Podcast Host/Intro Voice
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