0 (3s):
Shake the room Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast today, we'll be focusing on using content to grow a loyal audience, to drop these value bombs. I brought to Joe Pulizzi and to EOFire studios. Joe is the Amazon best-selling author of Content Inc, Killing Marketing, and Epic Content Marketing, which was named a must read business book by Fortune Magazine. His novel The Will to Die, was awarded "Best Suspense Book" of 2020 by the National Indie Excellence Awards.

0 (43s):
And Joe's latest version of Content Inc is now available. And today financial we'll be talking about the difference between a content, a gig worker, and a content entrepreneur. We'll talk about what the heck is Content Inc. We'll talk about the creator middle-class in having an exit strategy. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, Organifi specializes in creating delicious superfood blends, including my favorites, Organifi green juice powered by herbs and mushrooms. That literally help you adapt to the stress in your life. And today you can get 20% off your order, just visit organifi.com/fire. That's organifi.com/fire and use code FIRE at checkout for 20% off your order. According to a survey over two thirds of Americans are planning to travel this summer.

0 (1m 23s):
This means that airlines restaurants and more have been ramping up their hiring, who do they turn to ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as technology finds qualified candidates for your job, and you can easily invite your top choices to apply. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire. Joe say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 52s):
What's up JLD, Fire Nation. It's great to be back on the wonderful show that you have something. I believe. I think that content entrepreneurs are playing fool's gold when they think they can be everywhere their customers are at online. I think that's a big mistake. I'm a big believer in focus. We see that in the data. We see that when we talk to entrepreneurs about creating their own content empires, and there's too many content creators out there that are just feeling, they gotta be everywhere and they're making huge mistake right now, one

0 (2m 22s):
Mile wide and one inch deep, never works. Fire Nation, one inch wide, a mile deep. You have a chance on winning and this is pretty crazy, man. The first edition of content Inc came out in 2015. I mean, I remember interviewing you about this six years ago and as Joe and I, our dog and Fire Nation pre-interview this actually has fifth appearance on entrepreneurs on fire. So we've talked about a lot of stuff, a lot of your great books over the years and other things that you've had going on. So it's pretty nuts, pretty crazy. But why did you decide to update this book after six now? Oh geez.

1 (3m 1s):
You know, the whole journey was crazy. JLD because as you know, we sold my wife and I sold content marketing Institute, 2006. I stayed on until the end of 17. I took a full sabbatical year in 2018 and I became a novelist. I wrote a mystery thriller called the will to die. That was going to be my thing. I was getting out of marketing and, and entrepreneurship entirely. And then this thing called the pandemic happen. So this is in March. So basically in early March of 2020, we had the book kickoff for the will to die. And then two weeks after that, you know, everything shuts down and I start getting Facebook messages. I start getting texts. I start getting emails from people asking me about the content Inc model, because they're losing their jobs or they're, they're thinking about a career change and they want to see if they can make this content entrepreneurship work.

1 (3m 52s):
And I said, oh my gosh, let's check the data. So I start looking at the podcast, downloads of content and podcasts, which I stopped doing entirely. And I looked out and said, oh, podcast downloads are up. That's weird. I'm not producing any new episodes. I, I called my executive editor at McGraw hill education. And I said, you know, can you tell me the data on the, on the book from 2015, how's it doing? And she said, Hey, have you put any ads against it? Because sales are up. This is really weird. This is a five-year old book and it's starting to sell more. And of course we knew there was something there. This there's, there's this whole movement of content creation content. I call it content entrepreneurship. That's just taken off and people want to learn how to create a financially sustainable business model by creating content like you have, like I have every day and I thought it was time to redo it.

1 (4m 42s):
And it was great. You know, we, we redid your case study. We, we did, we talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs from all over the world about how they're building their content empires and then figured out, okay, there is a model it's we call it the content Inc model. It's seven steps. We updated it. We added exit strategy. We added, we switched some things around, based on the data. And now, you know, they keep pulling me back in JLD I would, I thought I was out, but here I am back in. When I thought

0 (5m 9s):
I got away, they pulled me back in,

1 (5m 13s):
What do you, what are you going to do? But it's, it's probably where I can do the most good. And I do have a passion around it. So, you know, here I am, I started the new business called the tilt that we're all focused on how entrepreneurs can find a financially sustainable model around this thing called content creation. And so that's what I'm doing from, from here on out. So

0 (5m 31s):
We teased it a little bit, but what is the essence? What is the heart? What is the soul of the content?

1 (5m 39s):
So basically it's seven steps. It's the sweet spot. The content tilt, building the base. Then you focus on audience building. Then you drive your first stage of revenue and diversify into other areas, other platforms. And then the end one is you either sell or you go big or you create an amazing lifestyle business you have with, with Fire Nation. The couple things that I want to talk about that are really important and things that we found that a lot of people might not agree with because it might not make sense. But the one thing is the base, the focus on one platform over and over again, we find these content entrepreneurs who are building multi-million dollar enterprises. They're not everywhere they are on YouTube or Twitch, or they have a podcast or they have an amazing email newsletter.

1 (6m 26s):
They're not doing everything at one time. Now later down the road, that's the thing that's called diversification. That's step six, but you have to build a minimum viable audience first. So that's that third step that's really important. And then two big issues in the model are one. The thing that I get the questions on most of the time JLD is a sink called the content tilt. And the content tilt is something that everyone has to have, but most content creators don't, and that's an area of differentiation. It's an area of little to no competition on the web where you actually have a chance to break through. So that means you have to focus on a different topic. You have to focus on a different audience type. You have to focus on a different platform. You have to tell a different story and you can't talk about the same old things that everyone else is talking about in the same way.

1 (7m 11s):
Like for you. I mean, you did a great job. There were really no entrepreneur podcasts that were daily when you started your thing. And you knew that you saw that as your opportunity and that became your content tilt. So with me, you know, when we started content marketing Institute, our whole thing was, Hey, can we build a category and call it content marketing? Nobody was using that term. But we went into that. We've focused all of our efforts on content marketing. And three years later, we built a million dollar enterprise, but it, a lot of people forget that, oh, I can't just talk about the same old thing. Or this is what I love. And this is what I know. No, you have to figure out what the audience is. Pain points are, what keep keeps them up at night.

1 (7m 51s):
And then you can figure out how you're going to position your content around that

0 (7m 55s):
Fire Nation focus, focus on one platform, focus, follow that one course until success. And I do love how you dove deeper into the content tail. Cause that is so valuable. So important. You've got to find foundation within your big idea, the niche that is underserved, that has a void, this being ignored that is really just like underappreciated and then become the best solution to that problem because there's little or no cops, so you can break through. And I appreciate that example. You gave of me with entrepreneurs on fire being the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. So I was the best.

0 (8m 35s):
I was also the worst. I was only. And before we move on, Joe, give us maybe one other example of a business that you've seen. That's really taken advantage of that content tilt.

1 (8m 48s):
You know, it's interesting. I have a good friend of mine, his name's Wally Coval and he created a Instagram site called accidentally Wes Anderson. And basically he started it with his wife and he started posting pictures on Instagram because he wanted to actually go to these places and travel. It's basically, it was his own travel list, but he put it on Instagram and what he realized, he started to look at all the pictures and they looked like they came directly out of a Wes Anderson movie. So that's where the accidentally west Anderson comes from and what he, what was missing in all these pictures that he found in all these locations. There weren't a lot of data. So what he's starting to do is say, oh, I wonder if I start posting these pictures and adding a little bit of data, a little bit of background about what these pictures mean, the significance of them, the historical context.

1 (9m 32s):
So he starts posting all these on Instagram every day. He posted something on accidentally Wes Anderson. And today he's got over a million files. This is just in three years, he's got over a million followers now. And he just hit the New York times bestseller list with a book called accidentally was Anderson. So what I love about that is he focused on doing something and filling a content gap that no one else was doing. It was also around a passion of his and then figure it out. Oh, well, where am I going to take this? I need to do this consistently every day. And that's kind of the other thing we find in the content Inc model. Like you've never missed a day. I never missed a day with my email newsletter that I send out a Wally never missed a day with this Instagram post.

1 (10m 12s):
This content is a promise to your customers. If you're going to build an empire, you can't miss a day, you actually have to set up the processes. So you don't miss it. You have to be like norm from cheers. You always have to show up. And when you do, you have to be interesting. So these are the, and I love that business model because what's great about accidentally Wes Anderson. And then our whole business model is it was not capital intensive at all. And this is what we find about content Inc businesses. It doesn't take a lot to get them off the ground. Now you have to be lean. You have to know that it takes about 12 to 18 months to build a minimum viable audience. It takes about 20 to 24 months to really get into some serious revenue. And it takes, you know, 36 months for you to say, look, I can actually do something with this business.

1 (10m 56s):
I can become a millionaire or I can actually sell it for multiple millions of dollars. So that's, and we've, we've talk about all these case studies in the book, but that's what we see over and over again. What's that differentiation focus on one platform consistently deliver over a long period of time. You build an audience that knows likes and trusts you. And then when you do that, that audience will make you very aware of the different revenue opportunities and the different profit opportunities that are available. And then you see a big diversification of revenue happen. And there you go, you built the content empire, and then you can do whatever you want to do in your life, which is amazing.

0 (11m 31s):
I mean, Fire Nation who doesn't want to be norm from cheers, let's be honest. We all want that at some point in her lives. And we're going to be talking about the difference between a content gig worker and a content entrepreneur. We'll be talking about having an exit strategy. And if you should even have one and so much more, when we get back from thanking our sponsors, according Forbes, Jim's nail salons, hotels, mom, and pop stores, and more are set to go on an epic hiring spree in the coming months to meet the pent up demand for these services. And all of these businesses reopening means that millions of jobs will need to be filled. So where do these businesses turn to fill these roles fast ZipRecruiter.

0 (12m 11s):
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0 (12m 53s):
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0 (13m 36s):
It contains 11 superfoods for resetting the body and helping you feel amazing throughout the day. Plus it's 100% USDA certified organic, and today you can get 20% off your order, just visit organifi.com/fire. That's organifi.com/fire and use code FIRE at checkout for 20% off your order, Joe, we're back. And as I kind of teased before the break, what the heck is the difference between a content gig worker in a content entrepreneur

1 (14m 6s):
Content entrepreneur is somebody that creates content on a regular basis and wants to build a full time financially sustainable business from it. There are people like you, people like me that are doing this every day. Unfortunately, the majority of content creators out there that I would say are gig workers or doing side hustles, you know, whatever you want to call it, their hobbies and what we're trying to do. That's one of the reasons why I have this renewed focus on this area is try to get people focused on, oh yeah, I'm doing this on the side and say, look, you can focus on this. And if you want to have all your dreams come true, you can actually make this thing happen. So we want to get them move from, you know, let's say the Uber of content working for somebody else, which means you're on YouTube and you basically have one form of revenue and you're doing part-time or you have a Twitch stream.

1 (14m 53s):
And you know, you're just getting revenue from Twitch subs and you're not diversifying and you're not doing it full time to actually saying, look, I'm going to scale this for the long-term. I'm going to find my virtual assistants. I'm going to start to set freelancers in order contract workers. So I can do this. Full-time still live my life, but focus every day on building a loyal audience and making this actual thing. And that's why I don't have the data yet. I really want to JLD. I think we, we can find it someday down the road, but I think this boom in entrepreneurship we've had of course led by things like the pandemic. I think the majority of those people launching new businesses are people that are launching a content entrepreneur businesses, where you might say they're part of the creator economy, but I love the focus on saying, I know you love entrepreneurs.

1 (15m 41s):
I love the word entrepreneur I do as well. I don't like content creator. I don't like creator economy. I think that puts too much focus on tech. I like this focus on content entrepreneur because first and foremost, an entrepreneur is in the business of building a business. And there is a business model behind it, a gig worker, a side hustle, whatever the case is, I don't think it takes a serious enough. And this is a serious,

0 (16m 6s):
This is a serious business Fire Nation. And the result is we have a creator middle-class and I love how you come up with these phrases and these terms. So talk to us more about this creator middle-class and why does this class need to diversify their revenue sources just to survive

1 (16m 26s):
So interesting. I mean, I think you and I have been hearing a lot about this idea of creator middle-class and basically what that means is it's not your big celebrities. It's not your big influencers. It's everyone in the middle. It's somebody that has, you know, 2000 email subscribers or 5,000 downloads to their podcast, or, or just getting started with 500 subscribers on YouTube, whatever the case is. And they're trying to make it, they want to be full-time content entrepreneurs, but haven't, haven't gotten to that point yet. Now what happens is if you're, and you know, this, if you're a big social influencer, you only need one revenue channel, let's say one revenue type. You could get all your advertising from YouTube.

1 (17m 7s):
You could get a huge sponsorship with, with a big tech company or something like that, because you're so well known. You've got multiple millions of followers and it's easier for you to do this. Well, what about everyone else? What everyone else has to do is you have to think like, let's say Disney, where Disney has 5, 6, 7, 8 different types of revenue. You have to think like Amazon, that has the same thing. So I'll give you an example. Maybe it'll solidify it. So let's say that you have a loyal audience in the middle. There's actually about eight different ways that you can drive revenue. And what I want a content entrepreneur to think about is how many of those different ways can you generate revenue to protect yourself? Just like you would protect your own stock investments.

1 (17m 48s):
You wouldn't say, oh, I'm going to put all my stock in apple because that's a terrible idea. Even though apple may be very successful. It also may go out of business and you've got no money. So if you are part of this creator, middle-class, if you're a content entrepreneur, you want to say, okay, I'm going to build this audience. Well, what can I do? I can generate advertising revenues or sponsorship revenues. I can do my own conference or my own event. I can have premium contents, like content, like a book or an audio book. I can solicit donations directly for that. I can have an affiliate program. Like you have a great affiliate program. JLD you get a paid subscriptions of some kind. And then you could also outside of direct revenue options, you could sell your own products and services and or products that you would create like a Copyblogger.

1 (18m 33s):
And Brian Clark has done a great job doing that, or you could sell your own consulting services. So I think what I want to do is once I build that loyal audience, I want to bolt on as many of those revenue and profit opportunities to protect yourself. And like, I would just ask you JLD you have what you have four or five, six different in your unit of affiliates, you have different subscription programs. You have meetups, you have advertising and sponsors. So you're very, very well-protected if one of those lines dries up or if we get a worldwide pandemic and there's no more in-person events. So these are the things that smart businesses have to do.

0 (19m 6s):
Smart businesses have to do this for our nation, because as we just saw, we cannot predict the future and companies that weren't diversified going into what happened last year. They paid the price, but those that were, and they were agile, they were quick, quick, and that could still generate revenue in different ways, different, diverse streams. They survived. And now in a lot of ways, they're thriving because a lot of their competition went by the wayside. So sometimes if you can just be diversified enough to make it through the tough times you come out, even stronger because your competition's not weaker. They're just gone. Now, one thing that I think is interesting, you know, a lot of people have some pretty strong feelings about this, which is having an exit strategy is like, is that quitting? Is that giving up?

0 (19m 46s):
Is that kind of, you know, leaving your quote unquote followers, fans, or content consumers in the lurch, why is an exit strategy so undervalued and why do you feel like it's so important? I

1 (19m 59s):
Have a big opinion on this one. And I'd say because you're an actually in the section that we have in the book on exit strategies and talk about yours, which were yours, was really building this lifestyle business. So your exit was a continuation of what you were already doing, which is completely fine. My exit was different and it depends on what you want for your life and your goals, your career goals and your personal goals. So, and you already know this story, but when some of your listeners don't in 2008, I always wanted to start a business and I wanted to sell that business. And I wanted my wife and I, and my family to have at least $10 million at the end of the day. And so, by the way, this is 2008. We were, I think at revenue that year we did about 50,000 in revenue.

1 (20m 39s):
So this is a big pipe dream, right. But I knew if I wrote this down, that I sold the business in 2008 for $15 million. And that's the number I wrote down JLD because I knew it talked to the, my accountant and he's, he said, Joe, you've got to sell for 15 in order to take 10 home. I'm like, okay, that's my goal. And I want to do that by 2015 because my kids who are now going on to college, I wanted to spend some real good quality time with them and not think about the business all the time. So I said, okay, 2015, a good year, a four or five years before they go off to college. So very personal goal. Also the financial goal of, of being set and, and protecting my family for the rest of their lives, wrote that down every morning.

1 (21m 20s):
When I woke up every night before I went to sleep at night, I read that over and over again. And what I wanted to do was I wanted my brain to work on that subconsciously overnight. And then when I woke up, I wanted to make sure I was doing those things more important than getting into email or falling down the social media rabbit hole or whatever. So, and by the way, we did not accomplish that goal. Unfortunately, we did accomplish it in 2016, we started the sales process at 15. So you know what it's okay. It worked out. We sold content marketing Institute to a large London-based events company in, in 2000 student in 2016. So it worked out very, very well for us. We hit the goals, we exceeded those goals, but what I want content entrepreneurs to think about in any entrepreneurs, I want you to know where you're taking this thing.

1 (22m 6s):
We're not just in it because we're spending this day, this certain way, what we're doing is we want to accomplish something. We want to make an impact on the world. And I want people to write down and review what that is. So what is that? Does that mean that you want to sell your organization for some amount of money at some point, does that mean that you want to become a big, a big enterprise? So the seventh step in the content model is sell or go big. So for example, do you want to sell, like we did, or you want to go big? And I would say probably your example JLD is you going big? Because you have accomplished your lifestyle business, exactly the way that you want it to you're living your best life. So you did absolutely went big.

1 (22m 47s):
You've got other ones that say, no, I actually want to create, like for example, HubSpot said, okay, we want to go super big. And we went, now they're a $30 billion company. So there's decisions you need to make. And if you make those upfront, you can spend every day working on those instead of getting sidetracked. So I'm a big believer that you have to figure out what your exit is. And by the way, if you don't know it right now, that's okay. Write down those goals, figure out where you want to go. Financially career wise, mentally, spiritually philanthropically, you know, where do you want to be? And you'll figure out that yes, down, this is what my best life would be, but let's take every step of the way to get there. So you have to have some kind of exit strategy.

0 (23m 29s):
Wow. I mean, Fire Nation. This is why you want to go in into any idea and to any concept in any business with a clear end goal in mind, because then you can say, you know what? This is the goals I'm going to write down and to see them every single day, they're going to become reality to me. And then I will make a reality in the future. Now, Joe, I want to give you the mic. I want to give you the stage. I want you allow you to share with Fire Nation, exactly what you want us, the listeners to take away from this entire episode. Then please share any call to action you have for us. I mean, obviously we have the update of your book and you know, everything that's going on there any other way, you want us to connect and then we'll say, goodbye.

1 (24m 11s):
Look, it we're all at different places. We're all creating content. In some way. What I would probably do is do a basic content audit, which means what content are you creating? What content are you spending resources on? And just write it down in front of you. Like, what are you doing on your blog? What are you doing on your podcast? What are you doing on YouTube? What are you doing on Twitter, LinkedIn? And write it all down. And what I really want you to do from this episode that you're listening to right now is I want you to kill a couple of those things. I want you to stop doing things that are wasting your time, that you've already experimented on that, you know, are not delivering valuable value to your audience and not delivering value to your business model because what we see over and over again, and I've had the opportunity to consult with billion dollar organizations.

1 (24m 55s):
And they expect me the content marketing guy JLD to come in and recommend content for them to create an every time I go in there and say, you've got content, run a muck, it's all over the place. There's no focus. You're not focused on delivering value and solving the pain points of your audience. So you just need to stop and do one or two things amazingly well, be the leading informational expert for your niche and don't focus on anything less. So that would be my recommendation. Start killing some things, focus on being the best in a few things. And you'll see change happen right before your eyes. Some of my calls to action. Obviously you talk about the book, go to content dash Inc com.

1 (25m 36s):
You can get the book, but for Fire Nation specifically, if you sign up to our newsletter, a new, my new business called The Tilt, go to thetilt.com/fire. And everyone that subscribes to my email newsletter gets $5 and tilt coin. That's our own cryptocurrency. So if you sign up now go to thetilt.com/fire, and you will get not only the subscription, which I think you'll like, but you'll get $5 until coin to use in an among yourself. And, and we're, I'm really big on this creator coin thing is you do don't JLD so I'm getting behind it and we've got our own currency and we're doing some, some pretty interesting things

0 (26m 11s):
With, and I've got some tilt coin Fire Nation. So, you know, don't be that person. That's like five years now. I was like, oh my God, did you hear what JLD just sold his tail coin for? Like, don't be that person, especially when Joe was giving it to you for free. And I just want to say Fire Nation, you know, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JP and JLD today. So keep up that heat, head over to EOFire.com, just type Joe in the search bar. The shows page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. Plus four episodes we've done over the years, listen to every single one, going a little JLD and JP binge. I mean, why not? Every one of them is value packed and of course, check out content dash Inc com head over to the tilt.com/fire to subscribe to that awesome newsletter and $5 in till coins.

0 (27m 7s):
And Joe, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, and fire with Fire Nation today, for that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Jo Ann's question. What can three thousands of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, the common path to uncommon success is a revolutionary 17 step roadmap that will lead you to a lifestyle that you've been dreaming about. So this book took me 10 years of acutely accumulating the genius. Please talk John of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place.

0 (27m 52s):
When you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com, I'll catch you there Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Organifi specializes in creating delicious superfood blends, including my favorites, Organifi green juice powered by herbs and mushrooms. That literally help you adapt to the stress in your life. And today you can get 20% off your order, just visit organifi.com/fire. That's organifi.com/fire and use code FIRE at checkout for 20% off your order. According to a survey over two thirds of Americans are planning to travel this summer. This means that airlines restaurants and more have been ramping up their hiring, who do they turn to ZipRecruiter ZipRecruiter as technology finds qualified candidates for your job, and you can easily invite your top choices to apply.

0 (28m 38s):
And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire.