"Content Marketing" with Joe Pulizzi 295

This week we have Joe Pulizzi as a guest on the podcast! Joe Pulizzi is the Amazon bestselling author of Content Inc., Killing Marketing and Epic Content Marketing, which was named a “Must-Read Business Book” by Fortune Magazine. Joe's latest version of Content Inc. will be released May, 2021.

Joe has founded three companies, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), and has launched dozens of events, including Content Marketing World. In 2014, he received the "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the Content Council. His podcast series, This Old Marketing with Robert Rose, has millions of downloads from over 150 countries. He is also the author of The Random Newsletter, delivered to thousands every two weeks. His Foundation, The Orange Effect, delivers speech therapy and technology services to children in over 25 states.

Watch the recording here.

Jim’s Hack: Drill down on what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong when it comes to your chances of getting someone to hire you.

Joe’s Tip: We all have limited resources. Do an audit and find 3 or 4 things to not do anymore in order to free up time to do other things exceptionally well.

Tyson’s Tip: Streamyard a live stream platform.

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Run your law firm the right way.

This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux.

Let's partner up and maximize your firm.

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson: And I'm Tyson Mutrux. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim: Well, Tyson, I think today we could call our podcast three dudes with a beard seeing none of us have shaved lately.

So, I'm really excited about having our guest today. His name is Joe Pulizzi. And Joe is the author of many fantastic marketing books. He was also the host of a great podcast on content marketing. It's something that I listened to week after week. I was quite sad when it ended. He's a master at content marketing. He's going to teach all of our lawyer friends today about content marketing.

Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe: Jim, thanks for having me. Tyson.

You should know, Jim, that we restarted. So, the podcast you're talking about which is called This Old Marketing. You know, I took my sabbatical and we're back on the air. So, there you go. 

Jim: That's awesome.

Tyson: As soon as I ask this question, and whenever I'm done, I'm going to go to my phone and hit the subscribe button. So, that's good to hear.

Joe: You know, I know we're going to talk a lot about content marketing and all kinds of stuff. But Robert Rose, who’s my co-host and I, we stopped the podcast at the end of 2017 because I took 2018 off entirely. Now, we started that podcast backup almost a year ago and, I swear, the majority of people still don't know that we're back on the air. So, it proves-- it’s like you have to be consistent with this stuff. And, when you stop, you might not ever get your audience back. So, I wish we would've kept it going but I did enjoy the year off.

Tyson: That's something that Jim and I have learned is just consistency is key, just keep going keep and keep producing. Even if you're not feeling like it, keep producing, keep pushing it out. 

But before we get to all that, though, like tell people about your journey. The people that don't know who you are, tell them about how you got to where you are now. 

Joe: Oh, man.

I mean, the publishing side or marketing side of it, I started in the publishing business in 2000, worked for a large business-to-business media company and fell into this practice area that we now call content marketing which is, you know, instead of interrupting our customers with advertising, we're going to focus on delivering valuable, compelling, relevant information to them on a consistent basis in order to build an audience of subscribers - loyal and trusted subscribers. And then, hopefully, if it goes right, they'll buy from you.

And I loved this whole idea of communication so much, I left business publishing in 2007 and started what became Content Marketing Institute which was all about training and education on this area called content marketing. And we're probably best known for our event called Content Marketing World. We started it in 2011. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. We had the event in Cleveland. We were hoping that, you know, could we get a hundred people to come to Cleveland, Ohio to go to this crazy marketing event? And lo and behold, over 600 people showed up. You know, not this year because of all the craziness going on. But, you know, last year, we had over 4000 people attend from like 75 different countries.

And then, my journey went up to 2016, my wife and I owned the company, and our goal was always to sell. We sold in 2016. I stayed with CMI until the end of 2017 as we were talking about.

And now, I'm sort of just dabbling back into marketing. I've written seven marketing books. I've written a novel called The Will to Die. I did that during my sabbatical in 2019. And just enjoying the last few moments with my two teenage boys before-- you know, I actually I thought they both be gone by now but they're still here for obvious reasons. I don't think I'm ever going to get rid of ‘em. But, no, we've had a great-- you know, outside all the horrible things that are going on, it has been nice to have my boys still around and enjoying some time with them.

So, yeah, so right now I'm just kind of getting back into it. And my new book comes out in May called Content Inc which is, you know, basically for entrepreneurs and trying to help them figure out this whole thing called content marketing and growing a business through content.

Jim: That's great stuff, Joe.

And one of the things that we get a lot of resistance from our members and from lawyers, in general, is looking at the blank page. They think that they have to create something from whole cloth. Can you talk a little bit about sort of creating content in the moment, as Gary Vee would say, “documenting as opposed to creating”? You know that hurdle that people get into, can you talk about that?

Joe: You know, I would imagine lawyers are not the greatest storytellers in the world, so they get a little bit nervous about, “Okay. Do I have something valuable to say and can I do this?” And my recommendation is to start really small and focus on just doing one thing.

So, if you are a small business owner, you're thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to be on LinkedIn. I’ve got to do this Twitter thing. What the heck's going on with Tik Tok? Should I do a blog? What about a podcast? Should I do videos?” And you're overwhelmed. You're like, “Oh, my God. I can't do all this. This is insane.”

All right. Take a step back. And all we're asking is, first of all, let's just start with why. Don't feel you have to do anything because maybe it's not a good plan for you. Let's start with why. Why should you create a podcast? Why should you do a blog? And it starts with your audience. You want to help make your audience - whoever you're targeting in your business, their lives a little bit better, their jobs a little bit easier with the content you create. If you do this really well, hopefully, it will help your business, but you have to do it over a long period of time.

So, I would just say start small. And you have a hypothesis and you say, “You know what? I think I'm going to start with a podcast.” And then, just work a little bit ahead. We're going to do a weekly podcast. And we're going to get some guests or not. Or, maybe it's just like Tyson and Jim’s show and we're going to talk for 45 minutes, kind of like Robert Rose and I do for our marketing podcast. We just talk for an hour about what's going on in the industry. And that type of authentic content could be all you need. You know, you never know what it is, what it's going to be.

Let's say you have a proclivity to-- maybe you've got-- you should be a weather person, that you should be on air, and you've sort of got that video thing down. Well, maybe it's a weekly video show. If you can write, halfway decent, maybe it's a weekly or every other week blog post. Or, maybe you like really long form content, so maybe it's a monthly meaty article that you're really going to help customers, depending on if they’re business customers or consumer customers.

So, Jim, to answer your question, people get just way too overwhelmed with it. So, I would start with, “Okay. Why am I going to do this? What's my ultimate goal? Who am I targeting? Who's that audience?”

And then, once we get that strategy a little bit planned out and written down, then you're going to figure out, “Okay, what's the hypothesis of what makes the most sense? Should it be a podcast? Should it be a blog?” And you just focus on one thing. You don't have to do at all because it's going to take you six to nine months just to get rolling anyways and figure out what this thing ultimately becomes. So, be patient and focus on just one thing. 

Tyson: Okay, Joe. So, do you have a grasp on, you know, what the future of content marketing is? Let me give you a little more context. 

Joe: Sure.

Tyson: So, like four years ago, John Lee Dumas was saying, “Do podcast. Do podcast. Do podcast” and, guess what, today podcasting is freakin’ huge. Like, five or six years ago, people were talking about Snapchat. A few years ago, people were talking about TikTok. I've seen successes on all these different platforms. So, do you have a grasp of what the future holds when it comes to a specific platform or a specific type of content people should be pushing out?

Joe: Yeah, I don't know if you're going to like this answer, Tyson. 

Tyson: No, I want the honest answer.

Joe: The honest answer is choose. It’s the honest answer. So, I just had the pleasure of doing about 50 interviews with small businesses all over the world. So, these are business-- they don't have a lot of money, resources. They're just trying to figure this whole thing out. What we found out is that the difference is they choose.

Yeah, we had one person that made a million bucks on TikTok. You had another person that started a $20-million business by launching videos on a Facebook group. You had another-- you know, many like john Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire, that did a podcast. I’ve got a friend of mine, Wally Coval, that every day, he did a picture on Instagram and built an audience of a million people.

So, it's the fact that they did one thing and they did one thing better than anything else. I mean, if you look at what's going on in email, people will say, “Oh, email’s dead.” Oh, my gosh, the Morning Brew started an email newsletter three years ago. They just sold it for $75 million. But what did they do? They just did an email newsletter. They just did the best one available - the best one possible. So that's where I would say, “Look, you don't have to do everything. You don't have to be on--

It's not like virtual reality’s the next best thing. You don't have to get your TikTok channel going. Could you? Is there a thing for first mover? Sure, there is. But, if you're going to be first mover, just do that one thing really well and become the expert in that.

And so, that's why when I talk to small businesses, I want to relieve them of some of the pressure that you don't have to, “Oh my God, how do I figure out this YouTube algorithm? And my search engine optimization is horrible.” I was like, “Okay. Yeah, you're not going to be great at everything. Just be good at one thing.”

Jim: So, one of the great concepts in Content Inc that I really liked and that I took to heart, both for my immigration law practice and for this podcast, was the power of building an audience and then figuring out later what to do with that audience. Can you talk a little bit about that, please? 

Joe: Yeah. It was kind of-- so, I wrote the first edition of Content Inc. Jim, as you know, it came out in 2015. And at the time, it was sort of a novel concept because you're basically saying, take the risk, build an audience of subscribers - whatever your audience might be, and then let's see what happens. Let's see what the revenue streams are. 

I mean, basically, I told the story of how we built Content Marketing Institute but then said, “Okay. Oh my gosh, there's all these businesses doing the same thing.” So, I'll give you an example of how we did it at CMI. So, we just started with a blog. So, for over 22 months, all we were doing is basically a daily blog. It started out as three to four times a week. Then, we went to five. Then, we went to seven days a week. We just did a blog, about a thousand words. And we had a blog and an e-newsletter. That's pretty much all we did.

So, the goal was to say, “Okay. We get people into the website, through the blog. And then, hopefully, if they really like what we're doing, they'll sign up for the e-newsletter. And we really didn't focus on any type of revenue opportunities until we got-- and the goal was to get to 10,000 subscribers. So, we knew, if we could get to 10,000 subscribers, we could start monetizing.

But the great thing that happens is, when you build an audience, they will tell you what they will buy. And that's what I didn't expect, Jim, because I thought, “Oh, my God. I have to know exactly what types of revenue I'm going to drive in my business.” Well, by sort of keeping it open-- and it does create some angst because you want a strategy. You want to say, “Oh, I know exactly what I'm going to sell.” If you're a lawyer, you know exactly what kind of practice you're going into, I'm sure.

But in this case, I didn't really know what my audience was going to buy. And then, I started getting emails and blog comments that said, “Joe, are there any events out there, in content marketing, that we could go to? Joe, is there any training available that we could get access to and pay for? Joe, we're looking to do an in-person workshop, is that something you could do?” And they basically just gave us the blueprint for what types of products and services we should offer? So, I said, “Oh, okay, it's not rocket science. Okay, I'm hearing that they want to go to an event.” There was no event at the time. “Okay, let's launch Content Marketing World.”

Oh, they really need some training and “we need some training on the corporate side. Is there any available?” “No.” “Okay. Let's launch Content Marketing University.” Not anything new or different. It's just that's the way that it goes. 

And if you look at all the other content models in the book, it's like, “Okay, some people launch merchandising, some people have affiliate programs, some people launch consulting services, some people they'll launch their legal programs. I mean, there was an example in the book about is it mesothelioma or whatever and there was a group of lawyers that just had created one website all around that issue because, as you know, if you have a lawsuit in that area, you know, the damages can be quite steep. So, this legal team, that's all they focused on. So, they were getting all kinds of people going to that site because that's all they focused on was that informational site and they had articles every day about that. And then, of course, from that, they had all kinds of extra legal work that came from building that audience.

So, I think that's where you have to realize, if you're going to do this, it does take some time. It takes between nine and 18 months to really get things going. And that's where you have a lot of small businesses that lose their patience and they think, after three to six months, you should have something. And I'm here to tell you, No, you won't. I mean, if your timetable is six months, go buy advertising, go interrupt a lot of people, because it takes time to build a loyal audience. So, to do it this way.

Now, the great thing is, if you if you are patient, you know that after 9, 12, 15, 18, 22 months, whatever the case is, you've built an asset. You’ve built an asset that is recurring revenue, depending on what your business model ends up being, that will live with you forever, and ever, and ever. 

And like CMI, we were able to take-- ultimately, we built our audience up to 200,000 and we were able to sell that for a lot of money. It worked out really well with us. I don't know, whoever's listening to this, what's your ultimate goal is but it was a pretty good exit.

Tyson: So that was actually a pretty good segue. And, Jim, I don't know if you noticed like, with the things that Joe was mentioning, it sounded very similar to how Maximum Lawyer sort of played out. It's a very similar thing.

But you mentioned the ads versus playing the long game. And we've seen, recently, with LSA, with Google, and then sort of pushing things towards the ads sort of a market and getting clients, does that concern you at all when it comes to producing content because it concerns me a little bit? Because it seems like--

Joe: What's the concern?

Tyson: SEO was, for years, like the king, right? You build content. You produce blogposts and that's how you get clients because then your website rises in the Google search rankings. But now, with local search ads with Google, it seems like they're really pushing people that way. So, it concerns me a little bit. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Joe: Well, they're in the business of advertising. And that's their number one priority. So, do I think that Google could do a better job in surfacing real results? Yes. I mean, if you go to some of these search engine result pages, some of the results are just terrible and old, by the way. But that's what we have right now. And that's what a lot of people are using or whatever. But at the top, and the bottom, and the side, you've got ads.

So, there's a couple of things you can do. One, there still is an opportunity for organic search. I mean, like, look at the opportunity of buying other website properties right now. Like, I'm really into the whole idea of website investing. So, let's say that there is another site that's available that surfaces well for a keyword that you're after, could you go out and buy that site for $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000? Those things are happening all the time on sites like Flippa and other marketplaces that are available. So that's a great opportunity.

Now, let's say that you just can't break through regular search results and you want to build an audience for your content, your blogs, your articles, your podcasts, whatever. So, let's say you're just getting started and you have a budget, and 100% total budget. How do I split that up between promotion and content creation? If you just started, 25% content creation and 75% promotion.

Now, a lot of people will say, “Oh, Joe, you're the content guy. You're saying spend the majority on promoting that content to start?” Absolutely. Because, as soon as you start that content, let's say that you're doing a blog series or podcast, you're not going to have much of an audience. It takes a long time to build an audience.

Well, do you want to, you know, take a little steroids with that content and grow that as quickly as possible? Okay, well, then maybe you were buying some pay-per-click keywords, maybe you're buying some Facebook advertising. For example, I wanted to-- after I got back into this whole marketing thing, I had zero audience. Like, “Okay, what do I do?” Well, I wanted to build my email newsletter audience to 10,000 people as fast as possible. So, I said, “Okay, let's create an amazing e-newsletter. And I'll take the rest of that budget and put it into-- I created a free ebook called Corona Marketing and then promoted it on Facebook. So, I'm paying like-- “Yeah, but 92 cents a sign up”, which is pretty good, I think, for somebody signing up to Corona Marketing to get the free ebook and then they get my e-newsletter. And I tell him right there, “You're signing up and getting the e-newsletter.” It's worked out really well. And, in a matter of nine months, we're almost at 10,000 subscribers. Well, if I put that all into content, I'd probably have a thousand subscribers, really good subscribers but that's not the goal.

So, I would say to answer your question, Tyson, yeah, there's all kinds of finagling going on in search. There's opportunities that used to be there. I mean, you could make a case that, if you got there early in 2007 and you created a blog, you could dominate a search term. Well, that's not available anymore, or you've really got to niche it down and figure out something that nobody's focusing on.

Or, let's promote that - use partners. There's many partners that have audiences, can you do a partner project, maybe a white paper together, or a research project together, or if you have a podcast like you guys, do, you bring on a guest. So, hopefully, that guest promotes that out to their audience and you get more people. You know, those types of things. It just takes time to do that but, if you methodically work it into the program, you can be successful.

Jim: Good, good stuff.

All right, Joe, so once we have the audience, one thing that I always have trouble with, and I think a lot of people do is making that pivot from providing valuable content to getting the people to think about a sale. Now, where do you think you fall-- I mean, I don't like to be pushy and I don't want to be pushy. I want it to be sort of a traction and for me to be ready when the lead is ready. But where do you come down on that?

Joe: Well, that's why, Jim, I love email because if you deliver an email newsletter-- and I do this all the time. About a year ago, I started a newsletter called The Random Newsletter which is about publishing, marketing, and finance, and all kinds of stuff that I love and want to talk about.

Well, I do promotions all the time for our foundation, Orange Effect, which, basically, is all about helping kids with speech therapy needs. And you're like, “Okay, well, how do I--?” And all I do is, in the content, now that I've got the 9500 subscribers that opened this thing up. And I say, “Did you know that Orange Effect Foundation is having this program called Silence for Speech Therapy coming up? Would you donate?”

So, if I'm a lawyer and, let's say I have 5000 subscribers and you have that email newsletter, I have no problem in telling them because you're delivering them something of value for free, good information. Do you think that they would mind you pitching your services a little bit? Not at all. They don't. And I've done this over and over again. They never do because you're delivering them something amazing for free.

And if you said, “Oh, by the way, I offer these services. Or, hey, if you need a free consultation on XYZ, you know, click here, let me know. Or, can you complete this survey?” And you can get more detail and maybe lead them a little bit down a funnel, depending on what you're trying to do. Or, “Here's my free ebook. Would you like to sign up? If you do, can we do a call?” or whatever the case is.

So, the point is, is that if you can get them to opt into something, first. And then always deliver valuable information but within that, and I would say, I always like to do it between the content - not in the content itself. So, if you have a really good article, go ahead and put something in.

So, in the This Old Marketing Podcast, at the 40-minute mark, every time, we say, “This podcast is brought to you by--" whatever. So, if you have a podcast, I'd have no problem. Like, you guys might say, “Okay. Hey, we're going to stop for a second because we've got this new product we're launching.” And, you know what, people are going to listen to it. If they like it, they don't have a problem with it.

I always like to wait until you have something that I call minimum viable audience to do that. What is that for you? Is that a thousand podcast subscribers? Is it 5000 email subscribers? Get to something where you know you have a loyal audience. And then, you can go ahead and add that in but, just don't do it in the content, do it outside of the free valuable content you're providing.

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Tyson: All right, Joe. So, I've got a question for you. You have several books and you can't say your first book. The answer to this cannot be your first book because that's probably what the answer is. But which one was the most difficult one for you to write and why?

Joe: Well, this has nothing to do with marketing or publishing but it was the novel. So, I don't know if your audience is interested in it. But the quick story about it. So, we sold the company. We had a great exit. Stayed on for a year and a half. My wife was in the company. She left six months before I did.

So, 2018, I'm off. And I don't know what happened but I'm talking with my wife and we were talking about how she's never read any of my books. And, at that time, I had six marketing books. She never read anything outside of the acknowledgment. She just read the acknowledgments to make sure. “Okay, what’d you say about me?” And then that's it. And I said--

Tyson: Hold on. Real quick, though, did that hurt your feelings? Were you like, “Oh, man, it’s terrible.”

Joe: No. Here's the thing. I said, “Why haven't you ever read any of my books?” And she said, “If you write something interesting, I will.”

Joe: That’s the one that was the zinger. I'm like, “Oh, this is terrible.”

So, I said, “Okay, I'm going to write you a book that you're going to read.” Now, she likes thrillers and mysteries. So, I said, “Okay, how do I get this thing going?” I've never written anything outside of business information before. And I started. And, honestly, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I mean, it is not easy creating a whole world and the story took me-- start, stop. It took me for a while. And then, finally--

Now, here's what the helpful information might be for your audience. I thought I had to plan the whole thing out. And what I realized is, I just had to sit down, every morning, and do the work. I actually read Stephen King's, On Writing which is a fantastic book on writing. He said, “Just get up every day and do it.” So, I got up and I blocked out an hour to just write. And I said, “I'm not getting up until that hour’s over.” So, I just kept writing and writing. 

And the first three or four days, I’ve got to tell you, Tyson, the information was terrible. Like, nobody would ever-- like, “What am I writing? Do I even know how to-- where does the period go?” It’s just terrible. And then, I started to get into a groove. I started to feel it. And then, 44 days later, I had myself a first draft.

And just by doing the work and, you know, edited it a little bit and gave it to my wife, Pam. And she read it and she honestly said she really liked it. And I said, “Are you kidding me?” And so, because she really liked it, then I went through the whole process. Sent it out to an editor. Edited it, the whole thing.

And then, you know, beginning of 2020 the book came out and we published it called The Will to Die. And it's about-- you know, the main character’s a marketer and, you know, ran a marketing agency. And it actually hit, you know, on three or four of the bestseller charts on Amazon, in the subcategories under thriller so. I mean, it did well. It sold a lot of copies. It was fun to do. But oh, my god, it was so difficult to do that.

If, Jim and Tyson, you said, “Joe write us an article on the 10 things that lawyers need to know right now for content marketing,” I could have that thing done in an hour. If it's anything about fiction, it is very, very difficult.

But the learning of the whole thing is, is when-- and, Jim, you asked this a little bit before about, “Okay. Well, you know, I've got a blank piece of paper. What do I do?” Just start the process. And if you if you start writing or start typing, the first day might not work. Second day might not work. But you have to get yourself into a rhythm. This might be a muscle - a storytelling muscle that's weak, that you’ve got to build up that muscle over time. Just like anything else. Just like eating good food, if you want to get healthy, or going to the gym, or whatever. The same thing happens with content creation. So, you have to put in the work. And that's what I had to do with fiction. Thankfully, she liked the book. 

And I was actually, honestly, going to write a version two. And then, this whole COVID-19 thing came up and I started getting requests to do a new version of Content Inc and I decided to do that instead. So, I put off that the novelist career for a while and I'm back in the marketing game. 

Jim: That's awesome. As someone who has dabbled in novel writing myself, I have a lot of respect for you having finished it. So, that's just great.

Joe: Yeah, it's not easy, oof. 

Jim: My favorite book of yours, and the one that really shook me up was Killing Marketing. And I think that it was a book that needed to be written and some things that needed to be said. Do you want to just give everyone the general concept of it so that they can understand what it's about and why it might be for them?

Joe: Thank you for that.

Killing Marketing. I thought that title was awesome, by the way. You know how O'Reilly was doing the Killing Lincoln and Killing-- I'm like, “Let's do Killing Marketing. I think it'd be fantastic.” A lot of people didn't like it, but we liked it.

The whole idea is that you're seeing convergence of media and marketing. And if you look at-- And, Tyson, you asked like, “What's to come?” I don't think this is going to affect small businesses as much. But, if you just look at a medium size, large businesses, marketing departments are becoming media enterprises.

And you've already seen it with Red Bull and Red Bull Media House. They've got one of the largest media franchises ever around extreme sports and audiences built in that area. You've seen Lego with the Lego Movie. Was Lego a manufacturing company or is Lego a media company? Well, Lego’s both. That's what you're starting to see.

So, when we had the idea of Killing Marketing, we were saying the idea of what we knew as marketing is going away and it's going to be all about building audiences. And that's what you're starting to see, when you see like Procter & Gamble, that was one of the biggest spenders of advertising forever. And, now, they're taking a lot of that and creating little sub sites like Home Made Simple, which I've loved forever which, basically, was how do-- and at the time, when they started, it was targeted at women - how can women spend more time with their families? That was their goal. So, all these tricks and efficiencies and things like that targeted at women. And they had an e-newsletter. And, now, they've got a whole product line just called Home Made Simple. So, they're creating all these things about building these small audiences. And that's what we're seeing.

Now, do I think that, if you're a lawyer, you can do the same thing? Absolutely. So, let's say you're just coming out of law school and you're trying to figure out, “Okay, well, should I go, you know, put my shingle out, or should I work at a firm, or whatever?” Well, if you had a specialty, my recommendation, first and foremost - and this is with any industry, but since we're talking about lawyers, is to focus on that niche that you can be the leading expert in the world.” And I mean, it's got to be a niche of a niche. Nothing is too small. And then, build that audience around there. How do you start? It could be a blog. It could be a video series. It could be a podcast. It could be a TikTok. Whatever. You know, I don't care, just pick one and go forward.

And then, from that, when you build that audience that's that Killing Marketing model where you can drive 10 different types of revenue from building that audience. There's six different types of traditional media revenue opportunities. And there's four different types of, if you are a lawyer, traditionally, how would you drive revenue? Media is, I can launch an event. I could sell sponsorships like you guys just had the ad on your program. I could do affiliate marketing. I could ask for donations. I could do specialized training or subscription properties. Okay, that's the media revenue side.

And then, if you go into the outside, it's like, Oh, I could sell products, or I could sell services just like you would normally do as a lawyer, or I could create more loyal customers, or I could create an audience that spends more money with me. That's the Killing Marketing model. I talk more about it in the in the new version of Content Inc coming up.

But I think, if you are going to start a business, that's the model. That's the least risky model. It's the most accessible model because media has been democratized today. And we can all be publishers. And we can all reach an audience. Is it easy? No. Does it take time? Yes. Is it capital intensive? It doesn't have to be. I think that would be the way to go. And that's where we see. 

I mean, I’ve got my master's degree. I'm definitely a pro-education guy but I'm seeing a lot of these kids come out of high school, and they're starting these audiences, and they're becoming multimillionaires by the time they're 21 or 22. Who am I to say that that's wrong? And that's what you're starting to see because they're growing up in this whole world of, “Oh, I can actually build an audience on Instagram, or TikTok, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or whatever it is. And then, they can sell whatever they want. So that's probably longer than what you wanted to but that's the idea behind Killing Marketing.

Jim: Loved it. Loved it.

Tyson: All right. So, we do need to wrap things up, Joe. I could talk to you for freakin’ hours. This is such a good episode. 

Can you tell people how to get in touch with you though, before we wrap?

Joe: Yeah. I mean, joepulizzi.com, P-U-L-I-Z-Z-I.com. It's got a got my seven books on there. You sign up for my random newsletter. It comes out every other Thursday. And then, if you want a little free gift, go to joepulizzi.com and then you can click on Corona Marketing, that's my latest marketing book, and it's completely free. And I've got, I don't know, 13, I think, different things that you could do right now to help build your audience in one way or another. Some, about three or four things we talked about on here. So, there'll be some new stuff on there to get you going. But that's called Corona Marketing. So, joepulizzi.com.

Tyson: I just did as you were talking. Thank you. Your confirmation email is on the way.

Joe: There you go. Hey, it works. 

Tyson: Absolutely. 

Joe: Thank God.

Tyson: Absolutely. 

All right. So, we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in The Guild, if you're interested, maxlawguild.com. We have a lot of great presenters in The Guild and a great group of people. Also, if you don't mind, just taking a few seconds, at the end of this episode - right now, as you're listening to our tips and hacks, to give us a five-star review. 

Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim: So, we're getting close to the end of the year and I suspect that some of our listeners are sitting around saying, “Hey, we need to do some of this marketing stuff in 2021.” And I really encourage everyone to remember that, at the end of the day, what marketing is talking about is, are you going to be able to have a transaction where somebody hires you? And so, to really spend time drilling down to that end piece of the marketing journey. So, what are you doing right and what are you doing wrong that's either helping or hurting your chances of getting someone to hire you?

Tyson: I like it. Good job, Jimmy.

All right, Joe. So, we always ask our guest to give a tip or a hack of the week. You got something for us?

Joe: I'll just lead right off of what Jim’s saying. In order to make that happen, we all have limited resources, I would look at what you're doing from a marketing standpoint right now. Let's say you've got four, or five, or six, or seven different things going on, and I would do your audit and, hopefully, by 2021, you're not doing three or four of those things. So, if you're doing seven or eight things mediocre, I want you to do two or three things exceptionally well in order to free up the time and energy to be great at those things. You've got to kill off some of these things that are just wasting everybody's time.

Tyson: That's fantastic. That actually fits in perfectly with something, a secret project that Jim and I are working on. So, that's really good.

Joe: All right.

Tyson: So, my tip of the week is something that Jim told me about. And I don't think, Jim, that you gave that as a hack but StreamYard is awesome. So, StreamYard is something that I’ll use this week for a live show that we're going to start producing for the firm. And it is awesome. You can put your logos, graphics on the screen and everything. It is really freakin’ awesome. It is a great platform for producing live videos.

Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show.

I've got kiddos in the background, so I'm going to start wrap things up. Thank you so much.

Joe: That's great. 

Jim: Thank, Joe.

Joe: That was great being on, guys. 

Jim: That was great.

Tyson: Thanks, guys.

Joe: Thanks again. 

Thanks for listening to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

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