Content Marketing Strategy for Startups

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A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. Today I have an extraordinary guest, Joe Pulizzi, the godfather of Content Marketing, he began using the term “content marketing” back in 2001.

Joe started a business in 2007, and that became the Content Marketing Institute. Probably best known for the event Content Marketing World that began in 2011. Now he is a co-founder and board member of the Orange Effect Foundation, which helps deliver funds to children with speech therapy needs and speech disorders who can’t afford it. He is an entrepreneur, investor and marketing speaker. Also, Joe wrote and published several books: Content Inc., Killing Marketing, Epic Content Marketing, a novel The Will to Die, and Corona Marketing ebook.

In this episode of B2B Marketing and More, we will talk about content marketing for startups.

In this episode:

• What do marketers need to do or how can they think differently in a changing business environment?
• In what ways does Covid change content marketing and strategy?
• What are the content strategy lessons for Startups?
• How can startups marketers make the adjustment and focus on the right content?
• How to build a minimum viable audience first, keep the focus, and when is the right time to diversify?
• What should be the startup team structure that wants to build a content marketing machine?
• How can startups with small or no budget build their audience?
• What is the future of content marketing, and what is the role of technology?

Quotes from the episode:

“We’ve got to start actually doing strategy when it comes to content creation and communication. The strategy is all about saying “no” to things and saying “yes” to a few things and then creating really good organized plans around those couple of yeses.”

“I’d rather have 10,000 email subscribers than 200,000 followers on Facebook. Not all followers are equal, so you have to make a decision. ”

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To expand your knowledge about content marketing and content strategy for startups check out some of my previous episodes.

Why Performing Content Must Start With The Right Culture

How to Build a Content-Centric Organization

In-House vs. Outsourced Marketing – The Pros and Cons

TRANSCRIPT

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I have a very special guest today. Very special! Joe Pulizzi, the godfather of Content Marketing. Seriously! When I got into content marketing, he was the first person I met. So we will talk about content marketing for startups, and that’s get started.

Hey Joe, welcome! I’m so happy. So happy to have you. Everybody knows you in the field of content marketing or the world universe of content marketing. So, you know, why do you want to share a little bit of yourself with our listeners? I know that you want golf out of content marketing. You wrote tons of books. So if there’s anything you want to share with our listeners, you know what? I’m giving you two minutes. Go!

Joe Pulizzi: Two minutes is too much. Uh, okay, here’s the question version that started in the publishing industry business-to-business publishing in 2000. I got the itch to start a business. 2007 that became the Content Marketing Institute. We’re probably best known for our event Content Marketing World. That started in 2011.

My wife and I sold the company in 2016, but I still happen to hang around and do things and do keynotes and whatnot. I’ve written seven books, one novel. 

Pam Didner:  Crazy! You are crazy!

Joe Pulizzi:  Well, I don’t know some of the books so crazy. And then the passion project, my wife and I run Orange Effect Foundation, which helps deliver funds to children with speech therapy needs, speech disorders, and who can’t afford it. So that’s what we sort of do in our full-time. 

Pam Didner: You are amazing. Do you find time to sleep at all? Seriously Joe!

Joe Pulizzi: Oh, you know, it doesn’t– you know what?  

Pam Didner: It’s like you are turning content like no one else, and you are so prolific, and I don’t even know if you sleep, seriously! 

Joe Pulizzi: No, no, no. I’ll be completely honest. I don’t create that much content. Do you know what it is? I just say no to a lot of things. I mean, that would be my recommendation to any, you know, anybody listening to this is to pick your spots. So, for example, you know, social media, pick your spots; content creation, don’t do everything. Do things well, especially today. So that’s what I tried to do. I mean, I’ve got my e-newsletter. I got the podcast. What I’m doing with content right now, every once in a while – a book comes out. 

Pam Didner: Yeah. That’s wonderful. Good insight. Say no to a lot of stuff and focus on what you do well or why you plan to do well. Yeah. So with that being said, COVID, right? It’s reshaping all purchasing behavior. And, um, I got this, uh, stat found Jay Baer. 50% of the consumers have purchased from a new, uh, provider since the pandemic. And I’m the one who can attest to it. Like I have to selfie lights like shining on me, right? So that’s a new purchase from a vendor I’ve never heard of. 

So I know that you wrote a Corona Marketing ebook. Can you tell our listeners what they need to do or think differently for this time around? 

Joe Pulizzi: So, you know, I wrote on Corona Marketing because I think now is a really good time to reset. Everyone reset a lot of things, but specifically marketing and communication.

I mean, if we believe what. The great Don Schultz believed is that brand is all about a relationship between an organization and an individual. So what’s key to our relationship? Communication. So that means brands, more than ever before, have to focus on how can we be better communicators. That is our competitive advantage.

Well, what we’ve done as marketers over the past three, four, ten years is we’ve had these opportunities, new challenges where we can now publish any time anywhere. And we have at will and in most cases not well. And you are wasting our time. We’re wasting our customer’s time. It’s not helping anyone just because we have 72 Twitter accounts and 45 Facebook groups in and all those types of things.

So my big recommendation, and I’ve already talked about this, but I believe this. We’ve got to start doing strategy when it comes to content creation and communication. Strategy is all about saying “no” to things and saying “yes” to a few things and then creating well-organized plans around those couple of yeses.

So, according to CMI marketing research, I think it says enterprise marketers have 14 to 16 different things they’re creating content for. Which great. That’s wonderful where we were kidding. We’re creating lots of content. I think the number probably should be two to three. And I know marketers don’t want to hear that because do we want to do the Facebook thing? We want to do the webinar thing. We want to do the virtual event thing. We want to do all these different things. But for the most part, I think you have to look at it like your content was in a box and say you took all the content you were creating and put it in a box and put it away. Would your customers notice? It’s a hard question to answer. 

If the answer to that is, I don’t know, or probably not. You’ve got a problem. So what we’ve got to do is go back to what media companies have done for the last 300 years, are they focused on doing one thing well, one platform with one content type deliver consistently over time.

And I would like to see many marketers start killing off things they’re doing to be great and helpful in one thing. 

Pam Didner: But can I be a devil’s advocate on that? Yeah. For example, the print magazine has done a great job on print in the past 300 years. Unfortunately, with the rise of digital and what they are doing very well is being hampered, they have to look at different venues. So I understand where you are coming from. But at the same time, I also feel you have to pilot. You had to test on the other channel and see if that works. So I think many marketers, especially on the client-side, encounter pressure from the management that the management will tell them that they need to diversify and focus on more channels.

And another reason is the things they are doing very well–let’s assume that channel is dying–they somehow have to make an effort to try a different channel. Does that make sense? I mean, I agree with you 100%, but at the same time, how do you make that adjustment, if you will, or decide what to cut what not to cut? I guess that’s my question.

Joe Pulizzi: Well, first of all, I agree with you. But it’s all in the timing. First of all, if you’re going to put all your resources to one platform, you’re not gonna put it to radio, right? You’re not going to put it to theatrical films. You’re not going to probably not going to put it to, to your point, a print magazine.

So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to test out–and I believe this–you take, to your point, it takes you two, three, four months to find your area of differentiation, the platform that’s going to work for you. Then you go all-in on that platform. You’ll go all-in with the blog, with the podcast, with the video series, with the Facebook group, whatever that is. And then you build an audience there–what Brian Clark calls “a minimum viable audience.” We need to build that there takes probably around nine to 12 months to do that well. And then you diversify. 

So look, I love the business model of Disney. So go back to 1957, where he focused everything around films and then said, “Oh. Everything’s in films. Our whole audience goes to films. That’s very risky right now because what if something happens to films?” What if a pandemic hits us and people don’t go there?

Pam Didner: What are we going to do?

Joe Pulizzi: I know that’s what I’m talking about. So Disney diversified into comic books and into, um, uh, comic strips and into other publications and in, uh, magazines and into radio and television and all those things and became Disney is they are. And by the way, it’s saved Disney this year as well because they pivoted over to Disney+.

And if they wouldn’t have pivoted to Disney plus where they’re down 85% in theatre in, in, uh, park revenues, Disney park revenues. And they’ve got, what over is it a hundred million subscribers now on Disney+ I’ve made it no, it’s over. I know it’s over 60 million for sure. It’s over 60. 

Pam Didner: No, we launched sometime this year, right? I think they launch in the middle of—

Joe Pulizzi: They launched in, uh, November of 19, when Disney+ launched. And thank God what timing. But that’s all a diversification strategy. But the point is what most marketers do is diversify from the start. Which never works. Never, ever, ever works. Because you can’t be great at all things at one time, so build your minimum viable audience first. And then, once you build that audience, you become the octopus. You wrap your customers and your eight different arms in content love in all of these different channels, and you make them more loyal, or they buy more from you or whatever they end up doing. So you’re right about diversification, but timing is an issue.

Pam Didner: It’s very important. So how does that thinking relate to your Content Inc model? Is that the model that you were talking about, that you focus on one channel focus that well, and then diversify afterwards? So how does your model apply to a current situation? 

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah. I mean, yes, it’s our current situation because anybody with any budget can do these small companies, large companies, whatever. But this Content Inc model where the whole idea behind it is, can you build an audience first?

And then see measurement or generate profits and revenues from products and services after you build an audience. And the answer is yes. It’s called a media company. It’s been used for hundreds of years. And what’s the model? And when, you know, we’ve interviewed more than a hundred different case studies from large companies, medium-sized companies from entrepreneurs that had nothing, and it’s unbelievable. Then, the model is always the same. It’s always okay. First of all, I know you have something that you want to talk about, and you have some expertise. And then, on the other side, you have your audience’s desire, their wants and needs and pain points. That’s great. Most companies stopped there and started creating all this content, but they have to go onto what we call the content. Tilt. 

The Content Tilt is your area of differentiation. It’s your hook. What’s that thing that’s going to cut through all the clutter. That is that you get that attention and build that audience. So that’s the first two. Then you find the base. We’ve just talked about that, whatever that base is–whether it’s a podcast, a video series, a Facebook group, a TikTok show, whatever. And then you’re all about audience building for the next nine to 12 months. 

And hopefully, you’re focused on an email audience where the algorithms don’t change all the time they do on rented land, those social channels. And you’re focusing on using those social channels to build your own. First-party data, your opt-in audience. And then from there, you’re then you go on to that diversification that we talked about. 

And then where’s the revenue coming from? You know, how do you generate revenue? Is it from when revenue where you’re selling more products and services? Is it from the loyalty type of revenue? Where are you keeping them longer? Is it high, higher yield revenue where they become better customers? Or, like media companies, are you making money directly off the content in training programs, paid content, whatever.

And then you decide how big you want to go. Do you want to become a Red Bull media house? Do you want to become Aero Electronics with 52 different content brands and more electronics engineers as their audience than any other media company on the planet–and they’re not a media company? So then you have to make those decisions. 

But it’s just funny where this is the model that we found everywhere. And it just depends on the timing, and I get so frustrated with marketers at large enterprises. And I get it they want to do everything all at once on time. And I’m like, “you’ll be- you can’t launch 13 shows at the same time. You’re not going to build an audience that way. You don’t have that kind of budget to do it effectively. Let’s do it one at a time, and then you can diversify.” 

Pam Didner: So, um, the cost acquisition and the con, um, for customers, I always get startups or even small businesses that come to me and said that they want to do content, but unfortunately, nothing is free, right? Even though you create the content you write a blog post, you still have to build the platform that costs money, which is the website. You need to start hiring people to write it. Well, you have to write it your time. That’s also money. A lot of people don’t have money. How can they build the audience from your perspective? And from my perspective, marketing is not necessarily free. You have to have some initial setup cost associated with it. And also, you need some little money to create content that’s enticing and compelling. But there are a lot of people that just don’t have money to start. What are your thought and recommendation? 

Joe Pulizzi: The biggest thing about having a marketing budget, which, yes, you do have startup costs, but a lot of that is promotion. Budget is how much more, how much quicker you can build an audience if you have promotion dollars. 

Pam Didner: Yeah. You have to pay dollars to accelerate. 

Joe Pulizzi: To accelerate. Yeah. So like if we were talking and we’re like, “okay, we’ve got 100% per cent of this budget. How much do we put to content creation versus content promotion?” If you’re just starting, I always say 25% content creation, 75% promotion. You can change that once you have an audience–can do lots of different things, but I’d say, okay, uh, let’s say you have a, you started a podcast.

It’s like, okay, great. You’re getting iTunes subscribers. You’re getting, uh, Spotify subscribers. That’s great. And you also have an email newsletter. Well, you have minimal costs. You have hosting costs on the podcast. You have some, maybe some email newsletter costs for the newsletter. But you’re like, “What I want to do is build my subscriber base.” Well, you can use a lot of influencer marketing tactics, but maybe what you need to do is buy some LinkedIn and Facebook ads set up a nice free ebook so you can get free subscribers. Well, it costs money to do that. 

Suppose you’ve got some promotion dollars to do that. That’s great. That’s where your money is. And that’s why bigger enterprises can build an audience quicker because of the fact quicker. Not a better audience. Yeah. So like, so, so it generally takes from start to build an audience that you can show measurement in whatever way it takes about 12 to 18 months for all of the interviews we’ve done – either to direct revenue or to sell more products and services or more loyal, showing more loyalty, whatever.

Okay, well, what have you don’t want to go 12 to 18 months? You have two options. You would take many marketing promotion budgets and speed up that process to get your audience quicker. Or you buy an asset upfront–a blog and influencer site, a podcast–so you’re not starting at zero. You’re starting at one. Because as you know, we’ve heard great people have said this for a long time: it’s a lot easier going from one to 100 and zero to one. If you want to speed it up, you might want to consider purchasing the asset and then altering that asset.

Pam Didner: It makes a lot of sense. If a startup tries to build a content marketing machine and wants to balance content creation and content promotion for audience acquisition, what is that team structure? What does that team structure look like? 

Joe Pulizzi: If you’re talking about a startup, the last thing you want to do is hire anybody. It’s the last thing you want to do. Uh, now I hate saying that, but it’s true. I mean, you’re talking to somebody who, you know, we, we built the Content Marketing Institute we were doing more than than $10 million. We had two employees and 26 amazing contractors. Now, maybe you don’t live in a country that favors independent contractor laws, but in the United States, that favors the 1099 independent contractors laws, as long as you don’t work over 32 hours a week and as long as you have multiple clients. 

So make sure the people that you work with do this. So to your point, yes. Do you need a good editor for your blog or a good copywriter? Yes, absolutely. Let’s form a good contact or relationship to do that. Let’s say you don’t want to do your podcast production, which is not that hard, but let’s say you don’t want to do it and you want somebody else to do it, spend a couple of hours, do that.

There are amazing people doing video production right now. So I would say, what do you need? What’s the specific thing you need? If you love doing it and you’re the startup person, then figure out how to do it, and you’ll enjoy it. But if you don’t like doing it and don’t have the expertise go and find somebody else to do it.

Pam Didner:  Yeah. So your recommendation is if you are up, try to minimize the payroll as much as you can, and not necessarily hire full-times, but have somebody competent enough to hire the right people to do the job. But you know, what you and Pam were very competent to start with, right. And then, uh, Pam is perfect in terms of operations and also managing different contractors. 

You probably have to hire somebody or one very competent person in operations, managing the contractor and sourcing the right talent for the startup. 

Joe Pulizzi: I might push back a little bit on that because I think you always have to have that proprietary knowledge on staff, especially with a startup mentality. It’s all about employee count; that’s the value. 

Pam Didner:  Yeah. 

Joe Pulizzi: I’ve never found that to be true. And we just completed about 50 different interviews out of all these very small companies that are growing quickly because they built these audiences and are monetizing them. Most of them don’t hire. Most of them use that independent contractor model. 

Now let’s just say that you’re deadset against using independent contractors. What you want to do is support your content creator. I don’t know if your content creators are your marketer or not. You could be outsourcing your content creator, and your marketing person could be on staff. What I, what I want today is I want somebody in market. I don’t care if it’s marketing PR, comms, whatever you want to call it. I want somebody that thinks audience first and not the product first. That’s what I want. I want a mentality difference than just say, “Oh, what’s this product? How are we going to sell it through all these channels? 

What I want to do is who that audience we’re targeting is? How are we going to deliver some amazing content experience to them consistently over and over again? And if the marketer understands that, adding in those paid components and those influencer components are so much easier if you understand the needs and pain points of the audience.  

And that’s, by the way, this is the total side rant. That’s my problem with marketing education right now. Cause marketing education, for the most part, is still preaching the four P’s all about what product are we going to sell? Place and promotion in place. That’s still applicable to some markets. But most of that’s not the case – most things are about the look, who are, who are we going after? Who is the group of people?

Pam Didner:  Yeah. Who are we going after? Let’s talk about them first.

Joe Pulizzi: Start with the audience first, and then you can sell them. Once you build a relationship with an audience, you can sell them anything you want. And that’s why, I mean, look at even an Amazon model. I mean, Amazon they’re like, “okay, well, what kind of, what kind of target—are we just targeting book lovers here? Who are we targeting? We’re under targeting people who ultimately want to shop online that don’t want to go to a store necessarily. We want to make that transaction with no friction at all.” It’s like, “Oh, well, if we do that, we can sell them pretty much anything (laughs).”

Pam Didner:  Yeah. So the last question I would like to ask you is your point of view, especially on the future of content marketing? What is the direction that we are going? And any kind of technology that force you foresee is going to happen? 

Joe Pulizzi: Well, that’s a big question, Pam (laughs). So hear me, let me first say this. It’s important to realize that the total amount spent between content marketing initiatives and advertising is the difference between Pluto and the sun. Like Pluto is content marketing, not even a planet yet, folks. Most dollars are spent on interruption marketing. So we’ve got to be realistic that we can talk all, all we want about, “Oh, we have to know the pain points and needs of our customers and focus on certain channels.” But the point is most companies don’t do that. They’re just throwing a lot of money at a lot of different channels, and most of it’s in your 15-30 second spots still, even though a lot of it’s gone online. So that’s where we are.   

Now, I think whether or not we keep calling it content marketing doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that we focus on helping our customers with their needs and pain points outside of what we sell them. That’s number one to me. Like, I want that mentality from a brand. Like we, “we want to help our customers no matter what, even if we don’t sell them something.” There’s a lot of people that don’t like that mentality. I think that’s the right mentality because if you do that, I think you’ll sell more to them ultimately.

So let’s have that audience-first mentality that we talked about, and then, whatever happens, happens. So I’d like to see the mission behind content marketing kind of bubble it’s way through all these regular marketing initiatives as we go. 

So then, so let’s go to the next step then, you know, you’re talking about technology. Right now, from a social media standpoint, the algorithm AI has already taken over our communications (laughs).

Pam Didner:  I 100% agree. I talk about AI as a part of the trend that we can’t ignore as content marketers. 

Joe Pulizzi: I mean, we have to be realistic to know that. There is a robot that is directing which content we engage with. And we people were the users; we’re the product, if you will. And we’re putting out all this content and then the different algorithms that are in Linked– 

Pam Didner:  It’s gonna select it and to see which one it’s gonna serve up.

Joe Pulizzi: We’re in the matrix here, folks. It could get ugly. I want to be an optimist about it. I’m concerned. So in some cases, I think we need to almost go old school. That’s what we talked about, email where I like the fact that I can have a relationship without t any intermediary. If I have an email relationship, opt-in email relationship with them, I can’t have it on other social media platforms where I have no control. I mean, if you, if you do a 15-second amazing video on TikTok and it hits or not, it’s not– 

Pam Didner:  That’s not yours to control. It’s actually how the algorithm is going to serve that up. 

Joe Pulizzi: Yes, that’s right. And if you, and if you even get a subscriber on YouTube that that says, “Oh great.” You’d think, “Oh, they’re going to see my videos in their feed next time.” The answer is. Maybe. Yeah, it’s up to YouTube. Whether they’re not, they want to show it. And whether they’re going to monetize your relationship with them or whatever that is, if it’s a relationship or something with Ellen or Jimmy Fallon or something else, right? 

I got to say; I’m a little concerned about what’s going on with technology. And that’s why I keep coming back to this thing. And for whatever reason, maybe because, I mean, I don’t know if you know Don Schultz, but you know, Don Schultz. I keep thinking about his old quotes and his quote about, you know, “the brand is a relationship between an organization and an individual.” It’s not something you build. It’s something you cultivate through communication. 

Pam Didner: Over some time, yeah.  

Joe Pulizzi: And I think that’s the future. Technology or not. I think that’s the future. So how do we do that? If there are tools that can enable that. Great. Um, but I want that focus. 

Pam Didner:  So it sounds like you, your recommendation for anybody is number one if you can build your audience, kind of like build your media, right? Your website is your media. Your community is your media. Your email is your media. To build something that you have control, build your platform. But if you leverage the other platform to build your audience, you have no control if that platform is being taken away or your account is being cancelled. At the same time, whatever they want to serve up, that’s up to them. It’s not necessarily up to you. 

Joe Pulizzi: Well, you and I have talked about it before, where we’ve talked about building your house on rented land. If you build your house on rented land, ultimately, you have no control over what happens on that land. And that’s social media. So ee talk about, and I’m not saying you don’t use social. Strategically use social because you have a subscriber hierarchy at the top of that hierarchy: a membership site or an email newsletter. And then it goes all the way down at the bottom. I would put Facebook or TikTok, or Twitter’s a little, maybe a little bit higher, because I like Twitter’s algorithm better.

And then you’ve got Apple Podcast, Spotify, and then you’re up, and then the print is up there still because people will give up a lot of data and information for a free subscription to stuff, so there’s that. And then you’ve got an email at the top. 

So what I want to do is let’s say your audience is hanging out on Facebook, and that’s the best to start building your platform. Well, you don’t own it, what do you do? You go create a Facebook group. That seems to be the best place to start on Facebook. Okay. I’m going to create something valuable on Facebook, but at some point, you’ve got to have a rent-to-own strategy and move those Facebook people over to your place.

Pam Didner:  Yeah, no, that’s a very good point. I have a Facebook community. I build that. So for you, I use multiple channels. That doesn’t mean like I have a multimillion-dollar business, and I was like, “Oh, I diversify.” I often think I’d be able to channel based on the premise or the, um, the desire to learn. Like, for example, launch launching the Facebook community, I’ve kind of wanted to see how that Facebook community works. When I launch a YouTube channel, I want to see how the YouTube channel works. And I also want to see how YouTube SEO is different than, you know, just the, uh, the text SEO. 

So, when I was testing a different channel is not just for me promoting myself. It’s also the ability to try to learn. Because I want to be a very integrated type of marketer. Like if my client asked me a specific question about podcasts, I have some insight to share. If they ask me anything about the YouTube channel, I have something to share, as well. So I want to be able to talk about multiple different channels. So I try different things, but you also brought a very good point in terms of, “Hey, if you build the audience on those channels, how do you bring them to your channel?”

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah. And the thing is to your point, first of all, you’re doing the right thing because that’s your business, and you should know it. If you want to know about it, then absolutely you need to do that. But I would never say, like, okay, I’m not a big Facebook or let’s say TikTok, we’ll use something different. Uh, well, there’s a lot of issues with tic-tac right now. We don’t know what’s going on in the US with TikTok, what’s going, you know, we don’t know exactly. Still, there are some really good case studies about people that have built large audiences on Tik, okay, and they’ve done it very well through consistent content generation. Great. What do you do with that when you get to 700,000 followers? That’s where your strategy comes in, and you have to move those because somebody asked me the other day. It was as I was railing on Facebook. And so “everyone’s on 2.7 billion people are on Facebook. You can’t do without Facebook.” I said, “well, I can make an argument right now that you don’t need a Facebook page anymore. You don’t need a business Facebook page anymore.” 

Pam Didner:  No, you don’t want a hundred per cent to agree with you. I have several people come to me. “I don’t have a Facebook account. I cannot join your community.” I was like, “okay, fine.” 

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah, exactly. And I said, “I’d rather have 10,000 email subscribers than 200,000 followers on Facebook.”, not all followers are equal, so you gotta, you gotta make a decision. But again, at the end of the day, we’re talking about marketing. It’s about behavior change. So, I’m saying to you that I believe behavior teams come first. When you build a trusted, loyal relationship with somebody first over a long period, you will be able to sell them more, or they will buy new things from you, or they will be more loyal on all of those marketing goals down the line that we want to contribute to. That’s what I, that’s what I believe. Yeah. 

Pam Didner:  Excellent. Excellent. Hey, thank you so much for coming to my show, Joe. It’s wonderful to hear your voice. And, uh, I just wanted everybody to know that you interviewed me ten years ago and that it took me ten years to reciprocate. Shame on Pam!

Joe Pulizzi: I remember. Yeah, I remember. I remember the first conference we were at. What was it that one in Colorado where you were speaking at? Yes. And we did, we had dinner, and we were like, yeah, 

Pam Didner:  I reach a crossroad at that time. Remember I say, “Hey, can I buy you dinner? “And then we have a chat. I was like, “Hey, I’m no longer drinking the Kool-Aid, the corporate Kool-Aid. I wanted to do something different. And what is your thought on that?” And when I asked that question, you kind of, you, you, I remember your facial expression. You were a little shocked. It was like, “I don’t even know you. Why are you talking to me? (both laugh)

Joe Pulizzi: I’m like running for the Hills.

Pam Didner:  “Alright, this woman is crazy!” (laughs)

Joe Pulizzi: No, I think I was like, uh, “I think you should.” 

Pam Didner: Thank you. Thank you.

Joe Pulizzi: You did a good job. I had nothing to do with it. I was just glad to be around. 

Pam Didner: Thank you so much, Joe. Hey again, thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I appreciate it. And if you want to chat, you can reach out to me anytime on any social media channel or email me at hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community, Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. I answer every single question that community member asks.

So again, love to hear from you. Take care. Bye