Content that Scales: How Joe Pulizzi Created a Content Marketing Empire and Is Using It for Good

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and I'm here with Joe Paoluzzi. How are you doing today, brother?

Thanks for having me. Well, shoot. How can you not be excited from that introduction?

I am so freaking stoked to have you on the show, man. I mean. Okay, so let me just talk about Joe for a second. Let me gush. He's got Z Squared marketing. He does this whole company thing. He started the company, was 34. He's written five books. The most recent one is called Killing Marketing. He also wrote a book called Content Inc. Which is more my speed. Content marketing for small brands, entrepreneurs. And he's from Cleveland, or just outside of Cleveland and Sandusky, Ohio. I'm just stoked to have you on the show today, Joe, because you're a warm dude and I appreciate that, that energy, and I want to bring more of that to the world and help more people see how awesome you are and how you can help them. So welcome to the show, Joe. Thanks.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, just trying to like you are just trying to share a little bit of value, and if you can do that and help a person along the way, then things are better. That's all.

I got to help a lot of people, right? And nowadays we can touch so many lives. So, Joe, why don't we start with the hero's journey, right? Kind of give people a grounding of who you are, tell them about some of the trials and tribulations, because people will respect you for your successes, but they'll love you for your failures. So let's get into it.

Do you want to talk failures, Brad? I got plans. I got plenty of them. So I was in corporate world. Started in 2000 at a large B2B publishing company and happened into this practice called content marketing. I got lucky, saw that there was potential in that, and I always had an itch to start my own business. And I said, I think this thing, this content marketing thing wasn't called content marketing at the time. It's going to be something big. Launched company in 2007, had this amazing idea. I thought it was going to be awesome. Create this tool. It was like the eharmony for content marketing. So agencies offered content services. We were going to match them up online with brands that really wanted to do custom magazines, newsletters, whatever, fell in love with the product. At the same time, thankfully started a blog, it's called the Content Marketing Revolution at the time. And the product failed miserably. And in 2009, I mean we were, it was working, we matched up about a thousand projects, but it was bleeding cash. I had two small kids at the time, I didn't think we were going to make it. And I actually started looking for a job and I said, okay, stop feeling sorry for yourself, Joe, let's get this thing in order. And I started to actually go through all my feedback from our audience and luckily the blog started to get had about 20,000 email subscribers to the blog at the time. And I just for whatever reason started to go through their feedback and they were saying, Joe, can you help us with training in our organization? Joe, we need consulting. Joe, is there an event for content marketing and all these other things that we weren't offering? And I said, I can't believe it. I built this audience and I'm pushing this product that less than 1% of my audience would actually buy. They're asking for other things. And I just, it was right then. So this is the end of 2009. I had a cocktail napkin in front of me and I said, alright, in the next three years we're going to create the leading online destination for content marketing, the leading magazine, print magazine for content marketing, and the largest in person event for content marketing. And three years later we were able to do that. So in May of 2010, pivoted the brand created Content Marketing Institute. In May of 2010, January 2011, Chief Content Officer magazine was born. And in September 2011, Content Marketing World was born. We were like, can I get 100 people to come to Cleveland for content marketing? And we were able to get 660 that year. This year was our seventh annual event in Cleveland, Ohio and we had over 3500 people from 70 countries come in. It is the largest in person event around the practice area. And you know, I'm totally blessed. My wife and I own the company.

Don't skip past that part because you just did something that's incredible right from 2009, cocktail napkin. You went and you rebranded your company, you took a failure, you made it into the biggest success. You actually asked people for what they wanted and created it. And now you got an event that's like the seventh year running now. The biggest, you know, event of its kind. 3500 people come to this event. This is the time I make more marbles. When we dance, we celebrate. This is what we celebrate.

Oh, yeah.

Joe, you are a freaking rock star. That's awesome. Congratulations.

Thank you. You know, we had a lot of help along the way. We've got a great team. You cracked me up, man. I. Yeah, I mean, so one of our. So my wife and I, we started the company. Thank God she had patience and she believed in me. I don't know how that happened, but our goal was to always sell the company in 2000.

It's almost like life is happening for us, Joe.

It's amazing. Yeah. We sold the company in 2016 and the end of this year, 2017. I don't know when people are listening to this, but it'll be. I'm moving out of operations for Content Marketing Institute and I'm taking six months off. I'm doing a 30 day Internet free sabbatical in January. I'm doing some bucket list traveling that I never had to do was spending time with my two teenage boys.

You're coming to San Diego so we go surfing.

Hey. Yeah, but I'm not gonna go in the water because you just got stingray.

That is a true story. Well, I didn't know the stingray Shuffle, Joe. I had the truffle shuffle down. I was pretty sure I knew how to do that. But the stingray shuffle, guys, in case you're not wonder, in case you don't want to get stung by a stingray like I just did on Sunday, is you just kind of like do the little shuffle.

That's right. Yeah. You can't because then you go underneath them. Right. Is that the way?

Well, they'll notice like the vibration and they'll swim away and they will freak out. Right. They're just, they'll re. They'll rehabituate themselves instead of nailing you with their venom.

Well, I'm going to come down and I'm. And I'm going to watch you. I'm just going to watch it. You show me how that's done and I'll go fishing or something. Yeah.

And I've been in the Ocean, you know, 10,000 times in my life or whatever. Probably not a lot.

That's your first. That's the first time.

That's my first stingray. I've never been bit by a shark. I've never been struck by lightning. But I did get nailed by a stingray and now it's infected. I'm going to, to go to the Hospital later. But podcast day is a secret day.

You have your priorities straight.

I got my priorities straight. Podcast first, make more marbles, Foot getting chopped off and getting a boomerang foot second.

Oh, my gosh.

Anyway, so, so, Joe, you're a rock star. What is. You know, I'm glad, I'm glad you're shaking some time yourself. You certainly deserve it. What do you think? Let's just make this valuable for the audience because we can be a couple of chuckleheads and not get any real value out of this. But what do you think are like the top three to five things that every content marketer should know? Why is content marketing for the people out there that just aren't doing content marketing? How can we, you know, unscrew their head a little bit and re evaluate some of the things and priorities in their life? And why do you think that, you know, they can win with content marketing? A lot of people say, oh, you know, I don't know what this is all about.

Yeah, so, you know, content marketing, it's the idea of instead of interrupting our customers, we're like, how can we create valuable, relevant, compelling information on a consistent basis to a targeted audience? We can do that today as you're doing it, as I have been able to do it by targeting a specific audience and figure out what their needs are. We build our own audience just like a media company does, and then we can monetize that in many different ways. Fortunately, there's a lot of people dabbling in content marketing and they're doing it wrong. They're like, oh, I'm going to publish on every platform. They do it inconsistently. They don't focus on what we call a content tilt, like something that actually is differentiated enough where you can cut through all the clutter that's out there. We usually create content that's just like everybody else. Like, if you're an H VAC contractor, I work with a lot of them. They're like, oh, well, we'll do things on, you know, how to have an energy efficient house in this area and whatever. But then you realize, oh, well, there's about 50 other companies that are doing exactly the same thing, exactly the same way you are, just to find something different that's truly valuable and build an audience on one platform. So what I would say my recommendation would be for any size business, but particularly a small business, is don't publish everywhere. Focus on. Okay, what is that? Content tilt? Where is that? What's that thing you're going to talk about is truly different that pain point you're going to solve for your audience and then pick a platform. Is it going to be, are you going to do audio for itunes? Are you going to do video on YouTube? Are you going to do pictures? Like, if you're a real estate agent, you want to do interesting pictures and use Instagram, build an audience that way and then try to move up the chain, whatever platform you decide to use, and build an audience of email subscribers. Even though it's 2017, email is still the most important thing. 99% of our revenue at Content Marketing Institute comes from an email subscriber in some way. And we're able to do this today because everyone has a smartphone 24. 7. And if we have really good information, we're trying to solve their challenges, they will opt into our information and they'll know, like, and trust us more. We'll transform their lives, and in turn, they'll transform our lives right back. So I would just say that the trend would be, don't get overwhelmed, just simplify it. Do something amazingly well. Be the best in your industry to a particular audience and consistently deliver over time. And the last thing I'll say is, if you said, joe, I love this content marketing thing, what can I expect in six months? I would say expect nothing. Expect absolutely nothing in six months. Done a ton of research in this area. Hundreds of different small companies. It takes between 12 and 18 months to build a loyal audience. So you have to go in and be patient. It's a marathon, not a sprint. If you keep that kind of mentality, you'll be successful.

Yeah, 100%. And I'll just add to that my experience at Make More Marbles, I started in 2014 in earnest. I had the idea in like 2000, 2013. But when it really came together, I took a course by Derek Halpern called Social. Well, you. Social Triggers. Yeah, Derek's awesome blog that converts. That was the course. And it talked about, you know, the divide and conquer strategy.

Be.

Be awesome at the one thing, nail it, and then you can scale it out. And you know, these giant brands, you know, you think, oh, Tony Robbins has this and this, this and this and this, and you have to have all that. No, start with the thing, nail it. Get some cash coming in the door so you can ultimately scale it. So we started. I just started Facebook every day, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. And that grew very quickly. And then the email came into that. I don't really use LinkedIn, although I have a lot of followers there. I don't really use other Media because I felt like Facebook was going to win, and I still feel that way, and they still are winning. And I felt like, you know, I knew most of the people who I wanted to connect with were there.

Right.

I just knew my demographic. I knew what it was, but it wasn't like I knew 100%. Like, I could tell it was going to work beforehand. I just trust that if I kept being valuable and relevant and specific and considerate to the people that I cared about, that I would eventually win them over. And I have. And now Facebook's like my magical genie lamp. Anything I ever need, I just put out a post and it's solved. It's great.

And you won. You won by delivering consistently. And if so, there's. There's two ways that businesses fall down. One is they're not consistent. They deliver all over the place. They're not. They don't consistently deliver. Just like a media company, you have to be consistent. And the other thing we talked about is they're not truly. It's not differentiated value. You have to offer something different than other people aren't. And I don't care what that is. It could be to a specific audience. It could be by the amount of times that you post consistently. It could be in the. In your format. Like John Lee Dumas, you probably know started on.

I've been on efr. Yeah, absolutely.

Exactly. I've been on his show, I think four times. And when we were talking about him and him getting started, now he's a multimillionaire. He's like, he saw an opportunity. There were no daily podcasts for entrepreneurs. There were lots of weeklies, lots of monthlies, no dailies. He said, I can differentiate with the daily. And of course he has. I think I was. Last time I was on, I was guest number 1154 on his show. That meant the previous 1153 days, he delivered a podcast at 3:30am Eastern Time and hasn't missed. Even though he's been through a lot of challenges recently, he just never misses a podcast. That's where we all fall down. Usually get three months, six months, nine months. Everybody drops off, they give up. You're the last one standing, and you have the audience and then you can monetize it however you want.

Yeah, we've been doing every weekday. That's our strategy. I don't know if JLD is seven days a week or not. Is he?

He was. The last time I checked, he was seven days a week.

Yeah, I was like number 1640 or whatever it is. And JLD is a machine. There's no small talk. There's no. It's just, hey, okay, cool, you're on.

Well, he records them. At least the last time I was on, he records them every one, seven or eight podcast, all on Sundays. He's got the rest.

That's amazing.

He's scaling and monetizing the platform, and he creates all the content in one day. So there's really no excuse.

Yes.

You have to transform and say, this is important for my livelihood. I'm going to do things a little bit different during the day. And obviously, John did it, you did it, I did it.

A lot of people do it, so it can be done is really the point. Guys, you may not start here. I have another saying, and I kind of adapted this from a lot of things that a friend of mine, Ryan Holiday, says he wrote Obstacles the Way. So Ryan's a really smart guy. He mentored under Robert Green. We're gonna have Robert on the show soon. I hope to have Ryan on as well. He says, you know, this is the adapted quote. If you're prolific and consistent, your talent has no choice but to catch up with you. So don't worry about being good. Just worry about being prolific, creating a lot and creating often and consistently, and then, you know, your talent will catch up. And I think that's really it. Like, you get better at doing things as you do them more. That's fine. Little hacks, you find little tips. And, you know, the other last piece I'll add is, because I think it's relevant, is that, you know, just focus on your 1% better. Just 1%. Not 100%, not 200%, just 1% better. Because 1% compounds. It does. It's not 365% better in a year. It's 3,778% better in a year. And if you could just focus on those little gains every day, you can get 1% better without even really trying too hard. And that's the point is just form that habit. How can I be a little bit better every day?

Well, and if you look at any live for what Kevin Kelly says, which I really believe is focus on those thousand true fans, and you really focus on those. For they will tell you, they will have. Your audience, will tell you how to get better. I mean, like when we started, we have a podcast, Robert Rose and I, this old marketing, and we just did episode 209. So we've been doing it for four years now, every week consistently. And we used to have to get All. It's a news program for content marketing. We had to go find all the news. How do we do it? All the links, rss now, all the, all the content comes from the audience. They tell us, you got to talk about this, Joe. They tag us on this little marketing hashtag. It makes it so much easier. They've made us better just because we've opened up those lines of communication. And it's easier for us to produce now because, okay, what's the audience telling us to cover? We do it just like, probably you get recommendations on. Oh, would you?

All the time.

That person. Nobody recommended me. Come on. I know that, but I don't know how you got.

But other than that, I gotta get. Well, we have our ways. I have to get. I have to get better at incorporating that audience feedback. Like, I just need a more streamlined process because that's another way I can improve is like getting the right questions before I talk to people. So, like when I have a really exciting guest on, like, we had the CEO of Virgin Galactic who used to be the former chief of staff of NASA, George Whitesides. This is one of our first episodes. I just basically went on. So I thought he was some mid level guy at Virgin Galactic. I didn't know he's the CEO. So I go on like five minutes before, I'm like, oh, it's that guy. Cool. And I'm like, hey guys, what do you want to know about the future? And like everybody in the world was like, I have a question, I have a question. So I asked all the questions. That was great. But I'd like to get better at that. So thank you for that, for that reflection. And then additionally, like, guys, just everybody, you gotta understand, everybody starts in a room by themselves with their own thoughts and their own ego. Tell them they can't do it. That's where everybody starts, right? It's just you and a mic and a computer and maybe some other accoutrements. Don't go crazy. Just start somewhere, start writing, start creating, do something. Just get good at it. Get all the crap out and just go.

That's it. That's the trick, I think, to add on to that. Well, you're absolutely right. I think the one thing that I've noticed when I'm. When I'm doing speeches to small businesses or entrepreneurs who want to do this kind of thing, they don't have goals set and they don't review those goals on a regular basis. Like, and I want to know, like, when somebody starts a business, the first thing I Want to know is, what's your exit strategy? They're like, exit strategy? I just started. Are you kidding me? I said, well, I want to know, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? Where do you want the kids to go to school? How much do you want to retire with? What impact do you want to make on the world? Like, you need to know that right now. I mean, of course, that all changes and depends on where you go. You can edit those goals, but you need to start somewhere. So that's what I would say is like, what do you want to accomplish in life? And then how can this kind of thing get you to where you want to go? And I think that's just missing. And if you could just add a couple measurable goals and review those on a regular basis, it's a game changer.

We always talk about the law of attraction, right? Which is a law. It works, right? But it's half of the equation. You also need the law of get off your ass and go take action, right? Because if you don't actually do anything, nothing ever gets materialized, right? So you can have the vision. That's important. Having the goal and having the signpost is really important. But if you don't get up and do something, nothing changes. So, you know, even John Asraf and some of these guys who actually lives here, not too far from here, you know, say, like, hey, we talked about the law of attraction, the secret. That's part of it. Go out and do something.

Yep, exactly.

Important to understand. So, guys, you know, since I don't have the audience interaction right now, I'm gonna. I'm doing something a little different. Joe, what do you wish everybody knew about your industry or about life in general?

Oh, man, do I wish everyone. I guess what I'm trying to. I still do a lot of speaking. I've spoken over 500 times in, like, 20 countries. And I'm trying to take the complexity out of being successful. Like, Peter Thiel wrote the book 0 to 1. I don't know if you've read that book. I didn't like that book. And I talk about it in my last book, Content Inc. I talk about it and I go through it because he's like, oh, if we create this amazing differentiated product like the world has never known, you can be successful. Well, how many companies do that? Hardly any. What I want to do is this is actually very simple process. You don't have to create all this stuff everywhere. You just have to focus on being good at one thing. And do it over time. And I wish somebody would have told me that in 2007 when I would have started and just said, what's the one thing that you can be really good at? Like, where do you have the authority to communicate that other people don't? Maybe you don't have to be the best, you have to be better than most. So figure out what that better than most is and then say, okay, well, who do you want to communicate that to? Like, I wanted to communicate it to marketers and ultimately I narrowed that to marketers at really large companies that are really having problems moving up, getting complex challenges done, political issues, red tape, all that. And so that's what I wanted to talk to. And that's how this content marketing movement came about. It was just that that's where I could be the best in the world. I don't think enough people sit down and figure that out. So I would just say take some time and figure out what you have to offer. And everyone has something. I don't care who you are, you all have.

Everybody has a reason to be here and everybody has a strength or a skill set. And that's why we use wealth dynamics. We geek out on it. Because everybody, every team, every big mission needs. People are good with ideas, people timing and numbers. But not every person is good at all those things. So if you figure out what you're really great at, then you can start surrounding yourself with people and then teamwork makes the dream work. I don't believe, like you say, you don't like Peter Thiel's message. I don't believe that solopreneurs can win.

You don't believe that Big solopreneurs?

I don't. I think they're setting themselves up for failure. If you're a one man show, you're setting yourself up for failure, not having the impact you could have. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Personally. Well, you know, to that point is make a list of what you really like to do and what you're good at and do those things and all the other things that you're not good at and you don't like to do. Find somebody else to help with that.

Yes, exactly. That's all I'm saying is just know what you're great at and surround yourself with people that balance you out.

Totally agree with that. And well, on that note, you can be an entrepreneur and you don't have to hire, you don't have to have an office, you don't have to hire people. You can work like our Staff. When we sold the company In 2016, we had 26 people. All those people were contractors. They all work between 50 and 70% of their time doing things.

That's a great distinction. And that's kind of what I meant.

Is like, well, that's, that's the thing. Well, when I. When I left, because I left big corporate company, it was a, you know, almost a billion dollar company. And I'm like, oh, well, I have to go find an office somewhere because I have to be legitimate. And I in. And then I'm realizing, thank God I didn't. Because you can keep your overhead so low that you have a competitive advantage right there. So don't get the office. You basically have a phone. You're good to go. Phone, Internet connection. You could pretty much do anything a big company could do today. But for some reason, we think we have to be bigger. We have to look bigger. It's not that way anymore. And big companies will actually pay you and work with you and you don't have to be a big, you know, enterprise with an office or whatever. They'll work with you no matter what. Working with smaller companies. So anyways. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. Well, there's two pieces of. That is like they're all busy and they only care if you can solve their problems or not. They don't care what you look like.

Or where you come from.

Can you solve their problem or not? They'll pay you all you want if it's. That's all they really care about. And then the other piece is you got to nail it before you can scale it. All that stuff will come, right? The office, all that. Yeah, that makes sense at a certain stage of business. It doesn't make sense when you're starting out.

No, exactly. Well, that's where the thing is when you talk about when you decide to make money and to really scale this thing, like for us, we actually had to build an audience of loyal subscribers first. You can't go out with the product right away and say, hey, or that's the traditional way to do it. Here's my great product and service. Buy advertising, lots of interruption work, whatever deal I can to get people to buy that product.

Or it's most of the time, crickets.

That's such a hard model. It's an almost impossible model today. Build the audience. Like Brian, my friend, Brian Clark, you probably know him, he started Copy blogger back in 2006.

We just hung out at 212, actually.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So Brian starts a blog in around online copywriting in 2006, 19 months, he blogs five days a week, builds an audience of 100,000 people. He's launched like 10 different products that none of them have been a failure. They've all been successful. And he says, listen to my audience and they'll try. They, they know like, and trust me already, they'll try whatever I have to offer. And he's been able to now scale this into a 10 million dollar plus business. It's pretty impressive.

And I love Brian. He's such a, he's such a weighty guy. He's really great. And he's like quiet and unassuming. You're like, oh man, you're crushing it. This is great. But that's just absolutely, yeah, Brian's great. So, yeah, I mean, and that goes to our strategy too is I always tell people, sell it before you create it. Really? And the worst thing that happens if you sell it before you create it is that nobody's really interested. Or you get a couple people to buy, you just apologize, refund and say, hey, we didn't, it wasn't something that we should actually build. But if you go in a room somewhere and I've done this, I'm not guilty of this. When you just say, I'm gonna make the best course ever, I'm gonna make the best product ever. And you don't actually talk to any humans whose problems you're gonna ultimately solve. Well, you're gonna end up with something nobody wants and you're gonna have a lot of pain. You're ultimately going to quit because you didn't do it the right way. And the right way is just to involve the people whose problems you want to solve from the get go and get their feedback so you can make something they actually want to buy and therefore.

No, exactly. Right. When we did the pivot in 2010, I was out of money. I mean, I maxed out the credit cards, I had nothing left. And I'm like, well, how can we get Content Marketing Institute off the ground? So we went to partners and I basically sold that dream. And we needed underwriters, we called them benefactors. And I said, okay, sell you this, you get 10% of the site traffic. All this stuff went through and we were able to get enough money to support ourselves to take it to the next level. And we were successful. But that, you know, what's the worst thing that could have happened? Sorry, that one didn't work out. I'm gonna try something else. But I love to pre sell. Like somebody called me the Other day said Joe, I want to start this training class. I want to go ahead and get this done. I got to put all. I got to put $50,000 into it first. And whatever. I'm like, why do you have to do that? Why don't you sell it first, get people to sign up for it? And then once you get people to sign up for it, then make the class?

And then that also goes to fundraising as a business. There's so many companies out there that are raising funds for nothing, and that's their whole business model. Instead of just going and selling, that's the best way. And then actual investors will get excited because you made sales, and then you can raise money. You got to start with sales. That's the number one key. You know, master key, skeleton key, skill set. That's it.

And by the way, if you didn't, when we go back to my core area here of content marketing, you sell mostly by what you communicate. That's how we differentiate ourselves, how you communicate. So it makes it much easier. A lot of entrepreneurs, they don't want to sell even though we're all in sales.

They're not entrepreneurs.

Well, they're all. But the thing is, you don't have to be the used car salesman type person. If you say, look, this is what we're trying to do, listen to my podcast, Listen, look at this blog post, look at this video series. And they will. It will sell itself. If you're passionate about it, it's good, it's consistent, all that kind of stuff.

So invaluable.

We were able to sell fairly easily in quotes, air quotes, fairly easily, because they saw the work product 100%.

And just like any tool, right? Sales is a tool. Influence is a tool. Persuasion is a tool. It's about who's wielding it and the mindset of that person and their goals and their intention behind it. You know, a hammer is a hammer is a hammer. It's just a hammer. But if, you know, you can either use it to build a house, which we do in Mexico, and we're doing two more in December, we pick up hammers, we build houses, or use it to cave somebody's skull in. I don't recommend the latter. I recommend the former, right? But it's still a hammer, you know, so use it appropriately. So sales can be used to scam people. It can be used to do things that are not ethical, but it can also be used to help people and serve people. And that's what it's used. It's supposed to be used for. That's, you know, to sell as human. That's our DNA, that's our core is just helping influence ideas. It's that kind of DNA that we have. And I think entrepreneurs especially need to just own that and that's what they do in the world and not apologize for it.

Exactly. Greatest time ever right now to be an entrepreneur. Never been a better time than right now.

Never been a better time because the barrier to entry is so low, you don't need a massive company to do anything anymore. You just don't. And in fact, that's actually a liability now. Like you said, you have more overhead and more risk than ever. And I know now that I have, you know, two dozen people working with us, like overhead, scary. It just is, you know, and it's a part of life now, but it wasn't always. And I'm just, I'm really good at just keeping consistent and the message across, you know, all. Everybody understands the mission. Everybody understands what they signed up for. They understand the kind of stress and taken up on. And luckily I have people that are willing to take up that mission with me and make it their own. And that. That takes years, guys.

It does. I'm going to assume this is how you manage so like this. So this was a general grant, one of our greatest general ever. What he did to lead is he would say, here's our vision, boys and girls. This is what we're trying to do. This is what we have to accomplish. Go do it. He didn't say, I want you to do this. I want you to be over here. Flank this way. Do what he said. This is the vision. This is when I need it done. He trusted his people and they got it done. Instead of micromanaging, that's what a lot of entrepreneurs do. They want to do every little thing themselves. They'll never be successful. You'll never scale it that way. Just trust in people to get that done. You'll know quickly whether or not they can do it. Let them find the way, the way that they want to do it. The way that they think is most successful, you can meet afterwards. But that's where we've had the greatest team on the planet because we just. Here's what we're trying to do. Run. Oh, here's the vision. So paint the vision for them and let them go. Yeah.

And that's really key because otherwise you become a bottleneck through which everything needs to pass and you ultimately slow down the growth of your company. The less I do in my company the faster we grow. And I'm sure you've seen the doing. It's crazy. I don't understand how it's possible take.

Everything away from you.

Yeah, but then, but then, you know, you can own 50 companies with the same amount of energy as it takes to operate one.

Well, that's when we knew we were gonna make it. When I had nothing to do. That's like, thank God Joe's not involved in this process. I think we're gonna have a successful company here. So that's what we, you know, my.

Guys are even saying to me. We just, we're kind of playing with the idea of having like an HR person, like, you know, team and clients, like just somebody who's not me, who has that same skill set who can really help lead and manage. And one of the things they said to me is like, you just need to be out front, man. Just go out front and make content, make it rain. Bring the people in the door, build the relationships at a high level. If you're down in the weeds, like, you're gonna crush it, you're gonna kill this company. I'm like, you're right. You're 100% right. So I just appreciate that, that I have people in my life that can gut check me and reality check me and assure me that, hey, this is gonna get done even if you're not on top of it all the time.

But you had to let go. You let go, I let go.

That's the lesson I'm learning. Little, little stingray magic just, you know, infused me with, infused me with. I can't do it, therefore it has to happen. Somebody else has to do it. And I asked for the help I needed and it's magic.

That's good.

So it's good.

We're all learning.

We're all at where we're at.

Absolutely.

You know, I see the dots connecting for sure. Okay, Joe, so let's, let's transition just a little bit because I want to understand your mission going forward. You're going to take your six month sabbatical. You definitely earned it. And when you come back, I guess when you're back on the stick or back on your mission, what, you know, you've been so generous with us and taking your time and explaining kind of what it is you do and some of your philosophies in life, hard won wisdom that everybody should take a look at and just consider for their own lives. But, you know, what can we do to support you? Right. We're here at make more Marbles to make more for everybody. We want to connect you to the resources, the opportunities, the people and the systems that help you to move your mission forward faster. So let's get really clear on what that is and how we can help and then how we can reach out and do that for you.

So just a quick story, just so you know where I'm coming from. So my oldest son is autistic, high functioning autist. He did, but he didn't speak until most 3 years old. No vocabulary at all. We diagnosed it and we like, okay, we need aggressive speech and play therapy so that he can be whatever he wants to be. And we were able to do that. By six years old, he was in regular school. But he had a tutor, had a tutor for a couple years. Now he's 16 years old. He's doing great. He's a sophomore in high school. But what we realized in that process is we were able, we had the financial means to get him the speech therapy hours of every day so that he's been successful and he's a great kid and he's communicating like crazy now. You can't get him to shut up. It's fantastic. But what I found over that time and I got involved in this, not a Nonprofit activity in 2007 where there are a ton of people that they die their kid, whatever, it's autism, it's apraxia, whatever it is, whatever the disability is, they can't communicate. They know they need speech therapy or they need some technology and they can't afford it. And this breaks my heart. So they go without. And that's the worst thing that you could possibly do. So we created a foundation called Orange Effect foundation. And all we do is fundraise. So we find we're a last case resort. So if you can't get the insurance, you can't find the means. Any way possible, we go and we funded hundreds of kids in over, I think over 20 states now to get them speech therapy services and to get them technology so they can communicate. And so that's where my, one of my passions is maybe my main passion right now. We're trying to scale that because as we found, the insurance has gotten more complicated and it's just, it breaks my heart the amount of people that aren't getting speech therapy for their children, boys and girls that absolutely need it. They know they need it, but they don't have the money. So that's what we're doing. Orange effect foundation theorange effect.org so two things. If you want to donate. Great. Because we will take those funds and deliver them right to a kid that needs it, a family that needs it, or if you know somebody, if your kid needs speech therapy or you know somebody, a kid with autism or apraxia that really needs speech therapy or some technology to communicate and you don't know how to do it, you go to theorange effect.org and we will help you find those funds so that. So you can help those kids. So that's kind of where I'm at. That's kind of my mission for next year. What we've noticed is there's too much need. There's great organizations like Autism Speaks. They do wonderful job, but they're focused mostly on research, and we don't. Lots of research out there. But what do we do for the kids that have already been diagnosed?

Right. Rubber meets the road. Yeah. Hey, you have autism. Congratulations. And what can we do for you next?

Moving on to. And by the way, no problem. We need a lot of research, and I want to figure out that. We need to figure that out. But, you know, we've got these amazing kids that are. That can do some amazing things, and they just need a break. And I believe that break is speech therapy.

That's beautiful. And your story is a testament to how. Never giving up, finding the right way and finding a way to make. What's your son's name, by the way?

Joshua.

Joshua. So finding a way to take Joshua's predicament and create a great outcome through speech and play therapy. That's a really beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Thanks for the opportunity. I'm very passionate.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And just off the top of my head, I have a couple of people that might be really interesting to talk to. We do a lot of charity work, as you know, through the Greatness foundation and other outlets. And I just. I'm always connecting people and dots behind the scenes. So I'll follow up with you on that.

Thank you.

But, yeah, let me. Let me just ask you, what do you think the scalable solution is besides just raising money and connecting people on a large scale? What do you think can be done from a programmatic, you know, using technology or future thinking? Like, what could this space look like, like, in five years if we start putting motion towards it?

Well, first of all, I don't know the answer to that, but what I think where. I think the answer lies in the amount of technology solutions that are coming along. That. I'll give you one example that is just amazing to me. So there is a girl, she's about 6 years old. She's never spoken a word in her life. And we were able to help fund a piece of technology to her where she could communicate for the first time. And she communicated through a whole. It was a whole iPad tablet set up with a special app and a couple other things. And the first thing. So her two brothers were there, and the. Her first way, the first communication she ever had was she told her brothers to leave her room. And she smiled. She's like, can you imagine how long she's never spoken at all? And she finally said, please get out of my room. That parents are crying. I mean, it was just an unbelievable. Now that's. That's actually, if you think about it, it's rudimentary technology. She's got a tablet. She's. She's using whatever.

Hawking. Professor Hawking's been using that for a long time.

Exactly. Now where are we going to be at? Where are we going to be at in five, ten years? I don't. I mean, I think that we can get to a point where she'll be able to communicate with no problems fairly easily. But I don't know what that looks like yet. I'm not a tech expert, but I know that we need to fund that to happen. So there's probably something else you might know better than I do, but there are.

My brain is spinning thinking here because there's so many different types of problems. It's not just this particular issue, but it's a lot of different issues, many different industries and charitable possibilities. Right. For example, we're working with addiction recovery and kind of behind the scenes and a couple other pieces. And I'm like, how can we all get smart together and fix these problems with better technology and leverage? Right. So maybe it's just as simple as getting an autistic child a way to communicate and get it all out and just. Just something that allows them to interface with the world because they're not able to currently. And then slowly, over time, like Joshua's story, you know, get better and better and continue to have more resources and finally get in school and. And kind of the training wheels come off eventually, you know, and just, oh, you're autistic.

Cool.

We accept you. We love you. Here's get started here. And we just move you down the line is instead of, oh, well, you know, good luck.

Well, if you know anything about autistic children is once they can communicate in whatever way that is, the. A lot of the behavior problems go away because the behavior problems that you.

See, they just can't get it out. They can't get it.

It's all in here. It's all bound up. How do they release that? They release that generally negatively, or we perceive it as negatively because they can't communicate. That's all they want to do is be understood. Once.

That's so frustrating.

Once it understood. I mean, it's this emotional meltdown that everyone has. Like, I can't believe it. It's here. We've done it. I mean, I've seen it firsthand. I mean, when. When Joshua used to line up all the chairs in our dining, he used to take all the chairs and line them up perfectly. And if you used to push a little chair out of the way that wasn't lined up, used to freak out. I mean, his. He was all about order, and he couldn't say anything but push and get. You know, now he'll tell you, hey, dad, this is the way I want it. Please, would you. Could you not mess with my chairs? You know, that. Whatever. But it's. It's. It's all about communication. So I love the idea. I think I've got to start thinking probably next step about what the big picture is, but.

Well, yeah, and that's what we're here to do, right? It's just, you know, we're all. The Internet especially, and we have supercomputers that live in our pockets that connects us to every human being on the planet. And the idea is just to get smarter together and then begin to cross pollinate between different industries that have certain things figured out, but not all things at all times, you know, because we're all trying to help. We're all trying to contribute at a high level. And the ways we can do that are moving so fast. The rate of change is so fast, it's exponentially growing that we don't even know what's happening. We don't know what's possible all the time. So these are types of opportunities where we can get together and say, okay, you know, we kind of understand what the problem is, or we have a really good working theory of what the problem is. What if we solved it in this way instead? So that's really what I get excited about. Because that connection, that piece, you know, bringing people together as opposed to having everybody siloed and working individually, will move progress so much faster. And we can progress exponentially. Not just change the world exponentially.

Well, what I. What I learned from you, and it's what it's how I hire people is the question through the questions they ask, I can see it. You can have all the qualifications and experience, and you might look perfect on paper and you might have a good attitude. But I'm looking for what kind of questions are you asking? Are you going to challenge things? Are you going to ask why? How much? Why do we do things that way? What was the process done? Is this a historical thing? All those types of things? That's the thing with marketing. I want somebody to go in and say, why do we do things that way? Why are we communicating that way? Is that good for the customer or is it good for us or what? You know, most things. That's, that's what changes the world. Just look at the problem and ask why. Right?

It's not because the problem is wrong. It was right when they solved it the first time. But now it's. The whole thing has changed.

Everything has changed.

The whole game is different. So you got to look at it again and say, hey, what's the best we can do right now? You know, that's one of the four agreements. Always do your best and your best changes circumstantially based on whatever the current playing field is. But that's the great thing about entrepreneurship, guys, is that the, the sands are always shifting and new opportunities are always opening and closing. And it's like you jump in the game and you get better at solving problems. And that's, that's wealth creation, solving people's problems.

That's it. Exactly right. Perfect.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna end there. I think that's a beautiful message and I'm really grateful for you to be on the show, Joe. And what are the. What's the best way to people. For people to find you? Get in touch you if they have anything that's a resource for the, for any of your missions or what you got going on.

So yeah, Joe Polizzi, P U L I z z I.com you can find all my books. The latest book is Killing Marketing and then Content Inc. Is a great one for entrepreneurs. So go there for that. And then I'm best reached at Twitter is my favorite platform. So Joe Polizzi on Twitter. So if you want to ping me directly, reach me there.

Done. Awesome. Joe, you rock. Thank you on behalf of everybody in the making community. You are awesome and we will be in touch. Thank you Joe.

Thanks brother.

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