John Normoyle - Founder @ Content Joinery

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Podcast. We have John Normoyle with us today. Uh, John, John is a founder at Humans Gain AI. He's also at, uh, Content Joinery. He's a brand content marketing strategist, previously at companies, uh, such as Meta, um, and Epsilon, Allison and Partners, and so forth. So John, welcome for round 2. What have you been up to since we last spoke?

Great to see you, Charles. Yeah, I think it's been about 3 years since we last met, and I think we even mentioned doing a follow-up. So thrilled to kind of hear back from you. I think it's— I love that you're doing this and kind of having accountability for people's predictions and what they're doing with their companies. And things have changed a lot the last 3 years. Um, I think you and I talked a lot about Things like cancel culture, we talked about AI, and it was kind of bubbling up there, and we had some pretty good predictions. What I've been working on is building up my consultancy and working with startups and working with small companies. I've worked with some very large companies on a consulting basis. I've got involved in kind of small businesses as well, directly getting involved in kind of local community efforts. I think you and I talked a lot about how I find it very important to keep a pulse on human behavior and what makes people tick and what motivates them and motivates them to do things and buy things. And that's kind of my world as a brand strategist. So I've had a lot of fun kind of exploring all of that. And as we ride this new technology wave, and I'm here in the Bay Area, I live in the North Bay. You feel it all around us, and that is how I make sure I'm still, quote unquote, touching grass and keeping connected with what my original career is as another thing lops over us. So, you know, we talked about AI, and I'm definitely using it way more. I think 3 years ago I was a little worried that with my role as a brand strategist, it might focus on content. You know, the name of my consultancy is Content Joinery. That's very specific. That's how most companies, organizations, that's how their marketing comes to life. And definitely went through a wave where I'm like, okay, this is going to really replace potentially a lot of what I do. And there was some times where, you know, I was working with small companies at small budgets, and 3 years ago they wanted to, you know, pay a small, like maybe low 5-figure fee to get help. And then maybe 12, 18 months later, those same people could find that Claude could do a lot of it for them. And it's definitely started to get a little nerve-wracking for people working in my industry. But I started to see a change again because now we're just seeing kind of what you and I talked about. There's a lot of stuff out there that's repetitive. People can kind of pick up on ChatGPT kind of copy so easily, and everyone's getting so inundated with the volume of marketing that it's starting to turn back again. And the role of kind of like trust and taste is coming back to it. So it's been quite the journey the last 3 years watching it, starting with some optimism, then getting very nervous with being replaced, and then being patient enough and being in this kind of career path for 20 years now at this point to know that, you know what, still gonna come back and they're gonna need a human touch. And that all kind of led to me exploring one of my many side businesses, which is Humans Gain AI. And that was very specific to bring humans and the tech together.

What is special about your human touch? What do you have that machines don't?

Well, there's like— there's nothing can replace kind of being in front of a human being and kind of reading their emotions and seeing how they react to things. And, you know, humans are so fickle. We talked about this a lot the last time, and you're constantly reacting to the context of the world and world events and local events and, you know, input of art and music and what they care about, what's happening in the world. And that's always changing. Something I got involved in locally that was a really interesting exercise for me is there's sort of a change we want to make in our local town, and it's involved us kind of having to go and talk to people in person, do door-to-door canvassing. And to be back put on my spot with no PowerPoint slides or anything to point at and just answer questions in real life and ask them questions about their world, it's been a really interesting exercise and helped fine-tune me. But when I'm trying to give advice to companies and businesses on how to position themselves and how to deal with the new political realities, how to deal with their competitors, at the end of the day, you know, every company is selling to some consumer somehow, and we have to kind of break through into what they care about. So for me, it's been really interesting to make sure that I'm still getting involved in talking to people, understanding the world, and not just from trying to sell them some tech product, or some consumer product, but everything in their life and seeing how all that weaves together. And then in real time when I'm working with clients or working with their businesses, I feel that I have a good understanding of actual people. And I think anyone working in marketing, particularly in brand strategy, they always have to be kind of immersed in the target audience, talking to them, seeing their world. You know, I live near San Francisco. I try to get in the city as much as possible, walk the streets, see what retail looks like. What does out-of-home advertising look like? What are people doing in bars and public transport? All of those things are so important. As you know, I'm now mostly kind of making judgment on what AI tools are creating for me. And I'm using it way more than I was 3 years ago. It's an amazing head start. We talked about that. I was mostly just using it for research at the time. Now it's getting me amazing first drafts. But I'm going through things and kind of applying my human judgment on it, and that's what I'm seeing kind of spread out and kind of broader in marketing, the brand strategy industry, and within any company. It's like, okay, this is great, but I still want to read this and see where I want to, you know, make some changes and make it a little bit more unique and make it a little bit more forward-looking.

Got it. Um, what's been the recent change in your life? You said you've worked for 20 years, needed a break, needed a fresh new Paige, what happened there?

Well, I've had so many different career paths. Like you, I think we talked before, I started computer science, I worked for a major NGO, then I went agency world. The biggest change for me is about, well, I used to work at Facebook and Meta, and like lots of people, I got laid off. And that was sort of, that was 3 or 4 years ago, and I'm in the Bay Area, and that has been a common story for so many people. It's why I set up the consultancy In the beginning, it's been a hard job market. What happened then was it started to get— actually, I really enjoyed it, and I was able to kind of start building that into a new kind of career path and seeing what's all happening with the tech companies around, taking people off and laying them off. It's like the freedom has been really, really fun. I've also kind of moved, I've changed relationship, I've had a lot more kind of independence in my life, I've had more time to kind of travel. And, you know, I worked very diligently in my 20s. I worked for a very high-profile person, former President Clinton. We talked a lot about that. I went back to grad school at night when I was in New York. Very, very intense. Same into my 30s, kind of building kind of tech career in the Bay Area. So it's been nice to kind of like water the emotion side of me and the playful side of things and the creativity side of things because I think, you know, in my work as a consultant, I want to be someone that, you know, founders and business owners really enjoy talking to and get good advice from me, and I'm giving them really strong deliverables to help them steer their company in a certain direction. And, you know, being someone who understands music and art, so one big push I did— this is gonna be a very quintessential Bay Area like activity, so you can cue your eye roll, but I went to Burning Man for the first time this year, which was just this amazing festival. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's all over socials a certain time of year. But that was absolutely a fascinating experiment for me in kind of observing human behavior, human creativity, dance culture, people from all over the world. And even for me personally, kind of getting off the phone for a couple of days, While I was there, I literally didn't carry my phone for 3 or 4 days. So I had no schedule, didn't even know what time it was. And, you know, you're using different senses to kind of explore your day. And it comes down to like, I hear great music in that distance, will I go over there? Or what is that art installation there that looks interesting? Or you're in line waiting for something, you just strike up a conversation with someone in front of you. And in my situation, discovered they were someone that lived or grew up like 5 miles away from me in Ireland. So I've been allowing myself kind of explore a lot more of that and then kind of bringing those kind of observations of the world back into the work I do. And I think I'm really glad I've done that, and I hope that it comes through in the quality of my work. And that when I am, you know, brought in to help a small company reposition themselves or working with even some agency partners and they've got large clients, that I can, you know, know, bring these types of insights and observations of the world into what we're doing and help them understand their customers better. And I think as a brand strategist, that's really, really important. And, you know, leaving big tech allowed me to kind of get out of that kind of bubble I was in a little bit, and I'm really grateful for it. And I think if I end up back working at a large company again, I'm able to kind of bring this kind of nuance and kind of So will you take another full-time job or will you stay in the founder game? You know, it's so far I have like pushed that one off pretty successfully now for 4 years. So it's going and, you know, I think it's hard because of where I live, because I'm so close to so much here in San Francisco. You can definitely have some FOMO. And, but, you know, I'm also at a stage in my career now, it's not as important to like jump right in and grab a bunch of like stock options. I've done pretty well. So, you know, maybe I'm open to it. I think I've made my own little kind of rules on it. You know, I worked very hard to get into tech in the first place, and it was a great achievement for me and part of the reason I moved out here. And I've been there. And I think what was interesting, I sort of had two— what I love about my world now, kind of being close to it but slightly outside, is it's so much easier for me to share my opinion. And I remember there was two— I love living in the Bay Area for lots of reasons, but being able to be in the room with some of these people and kind of see them for who they are is fascinating. So there's been two opportunities in the last year or two where I've got to be in the same room as people speaking, and one was Mark Zuckerberg, and the following year was Sam Altman. And given the world that we're dealing with, with AI, these giant tech companies and the massive influence they have on the public and consumers and politics is just sitting there and physically seeing them and hearing them and realizing, you know what, they are just like you and me, Charles. They're just humans. They have flaws. They obviously have worked incredibly hard to achieve what they've achieved, but they're people at the end of the day. And that has been really, really eye-opening for me just to sit there and kind of go, you know what, similar age to you and me, a little bit younger than me, a little bit older than you maybe. It's like, wow, they have enormous power. They're still just human beings. And they have flaws and will make mistakes. So a little kind of less rose-tinted glasses than some of the giant tech companies. But I do think that makes me a little bit more stronger as an advisor and as a consultant.

What's your strategy to get new clients? Because how much clients do you have right now, like 5 to 10 a month? Do you have a growth strategy or—

So I usually work with 2 or 3 clients because I go pretty deep with them. It's referrals. I'm very lucky that, you know, I think it's harder for someone to kind of just launch a kind of a consultancy like I have without having worked in the industry for a long time. That's why you see most people are kind of mid to senior in their career. So because I've worked in lots of different agency environments and I've had clients that, you know, worked at one company, moved somewhere else, and they remember working with me and they kind of reach out. And then, you know, also they get referrals from the community where I live. So I'm very active going to a cowork and then just building networks that way. And that's how I prefer to do it because for me, you know, I get very invested with my clients and I care about them. And I wanna go the extra mile and I wanna be able to kind of sit in front of them and I love working in person with people. So, you know, I don't need to do the type of work that I do, someone's gonna hire me for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, maybe part-time. So I don't need massive wide sales lead to whittle down. It might be a little bit different in your world. So referrals works out really, really well.

Referrals, yeah, referrals are good, but they're not predictable, right? So it's like, why can't you take 2x more clients? My question.

Because I don't want to. You know, like I have enough to enjoy my work and be a little bit choosy about who I work with. And yeah, maybe I might kind of drive it up. And what's interesting, one of the AI predictions you and I talked about was sort of like, you know, you were, I think at the time sending out like 65,000 cold emails and We talked about how I was a little worried. I was like, look, I think in— this was what, September '23 we talked? And I'm like, you're ahead of it, Charles. You're at it. You're pumping these out. I'm seeing your emails. I'm reading them. But within 18 to 24 months, it's just going to be everyone's doing this and it's all going to look the same. And then really it's going to be really hard to break through. And I'm absolutely seeing that. It was interesting kind of listening back to our conversation and then looking at my own inbox and I get so many of these like Hey John, would you like to go on this podcast and we'll get you the right clients? It's like, I just mostly, and you know, you've seen it, like the tiny little email with no graphics and hey, we might know each other. They've even dropped your name in there. It's just fascinating to see it. Most of it I'm ignoring because I don't trust these kind of AI-driven CRM machines to get me the right type of clients. It's just not worth it for me. And I think that's been, you know, you and I kind of, we talked about that and the volume and you were ahead of it and hopefully it turned into amazing growth for you. There's so much of it happening right now. And I do see that a lot of these, particularly CRM marketing, they're all kind of struggling to kind of bring in that actual kind of referral that's truly a good fit. And right now, you know, I do well with people that are like, I've worked with John before, I've met him in person, he's great, and you guys should consider working with him. That has been a better success for me.

That strategy brought you here, right? Like, that's my retort, right? So it still works, and that doesn't stop from— for other referrals, right? It just magnifies other referrals. Just means you have more top of funnel, more clients to work with, and more people to Refer you, and then yeah, I know that you're solo and you're looking to—I don't know—have a fun life. Life is fun on mine as well. Just that I have agents running campaigns for me on the back end, right? So can still enjoy myself, can still do a bunch of things. I'm asking because it's getting more and more competitive, right? Like with agents rolling, and I'm just worried like. Yeah, I think I still think agents and AGIs are gonna slash most jobs, you know, and think nowadays to survive in business, you really need to go all in, else you're just faced with other competitors that do these, these, that apply these systems and get 10x more business and sort of undercut you. And it's like winner takes all dynamic. What do you think about that?

No, it's fair. And like, I remember when we spoke, it was kind of the early days, and I was like, in my head going, you know, I'm a, brand strategist or more of a copywriter background. And I was like, I'll probably need a partner, maybe officially with an art director or graphic design to bring kind of visuals to life. So what was interesting is like maybe about 6 months after we spoke, it's like, wow, the graphic design tools like Canva have just gotten so strong. I can bring it to a really far level by myself and then occasionally work with a human graphic designer just for that final fine-tuning. So it's allowed me to do a lot of kind of what would be expected of a small brand strategy consultancy, a lot by myself. And then I'm bringing that kind of like final taste and judgment at the end. I've also seen, it's been interesting, like working with art directors that are also positioning themselves as kind of brand leads. And they're sort of the opposite for me, where they're using Claude to come up with sort of the positioning. and they're able to do a lot of the visuals and it works great, particularly if their client is something that requires a lot of visual identity work. It might be packaging a consumer product. I work with a lot of B2B clients and startups, it's a little bit different, but they can bring a lot of the— as a graphic designer and art director, bring a lot of the copy really far along and then sort of position themselves as a one-stop shop around strategy, even though their background is graphic design. And then again, bring someone like me in for a very small part of it at the end just to fine-tune some of the copy. So that has been a great result of AI tools for me because it's allowed me to keep the consultancy mostly for myself and feel confident that I can deliver for clients what they need without having to take in and like actually expand with FTE employees. And I'm seeing this trend a lot, particularly in marketing, where There's a lot more fractional work where people with experience are able to kind of work fractionally, focus on what they're really good at, and then team up with the right people. And I'm starting to do that now with some sort of folks in the VC world who are very focused on examining startups, and they're looking for someone like me to help them come in and examine a startup's positioning and frankly work with the founders on their storytelling. What we're seeing in a lot of startup pitches, I think the slides look great because Claude's making them all. I can literally spot them in these competitions. I'm like, that one's Claude, that one's Claude. Oh, they did it themselves. And the founder storytelling is becoming just so critical to kind of make a change or make kind of breakthrough in the room when they're looking for funding.

So what do people hire you for nowadays? What are your packages? Let's say I hire you for one of my companies.

Well, usually it's kind of a brand positioning, so positioning of the company, coming up with kind of like what you actually stand for, who you— what is your mission and vision, what are your key messages, and then kind of deep dives into target audience or target customers. And what I'm finding is that bigger or smaller companies, they've done this once themselves using AI, and then it sort of gave them something very generic. And it just wasn't getting traction when they were trying to translate it into their marketing messages. And they want to start working with a human again to help guide them through it. And one of the really interesting things for me is that they sort of realized that when they weren't making the brand themselves, the brand positioning documents themselves, or weren't kind of going through kind of the heavier work of going through talking to their customers, potential customers, and hearing those insights, They just didn't feel like they knew it as well. And then for this, for any kind of small company to bring their brand to life, they really are going to be relying on their employees to be really soaking it in and bringing it to their work every day. And they were kind of skipping that process a lot. So prior to AI, you know, a lot of the research is manual, talking to customers, you're also working with the employees a lot and making them part of the process. And when they're part of the process and have to sit with me and do a one-on-one interview and I ask them about the product, me asking them questions and forcing them to kind of explain it helps them get more vested in sort of the final product. So I'm starting to see that kind of come back where they're like, okay, we tried this kind of in an automated cheap way before, we got this amazing looking PowerPoint deck, but then it kind of sat and went nowhere and our employees don't understand why we're even trying to go this direction. We need to kind of have more of a balance. Can we work with someone like you that can take this and then help actually work hands-on with our client, our employees to bring this more to life in their work, whether it's designing the product or doing marketing or engineering, no matter what it is, everyone needs to soak it up. And they're the types of clients that I've been kind of looking for. And it's been heartening when I get like a callback 6 or 9 months later going, okay, we tried to do it cheap, it didn't work. Can we now work with you?

Interesting. What are your goals for this year? What do you want to accomplish?

Um, I think I'd like to start working— I've been working a lot remotely, and I'm definitely very focused on Bay Area clients, getting back into rooms with people. It's what I enjoy the most. I think people get a lot more value out of that than just purely remote relationships. So I'm definitely looking for clients in San Francisco Bay Area that are interested in working in person with someone like me. I think you'd just be more candid. One of my favorite clients refers to me as his chief bullshit detection officer. And that's what I like to do is just kind of come in and cut through the noise. I also have been working on this kind of side business called Humans Gain AI with a co-founder. We started doing workshops. And it was really interesting because it was at a time, this time last year, when people were kind of struggling with how to use tools. But As a result of the tools actually becoming much, much better, people don't really need that kind of hands-on instruction anymore. So we're currently trying to figure out, okay, we still feel that there needs to be a bridge between humans and these tools to actually really make this magic happen. The previous approach with kind of hands-on training is becoming more obsolete because it's just so much easier to use. I'm trying to discover what that might look like, and it might look a lot more like bringing kind of creative creativity and creative stimulus into kind of business planning or business projects using these tools and helping people understand that. So that's the other thing I'm kind of working on with a co-founder. So it's always like about 5 things going at once, which I think is sort of part of living in the Bay Area, being in this kind of tech world. And I'm sure that's your world too.

Yeah, for sure. Where can people find out more about you, John?

Best way is contentjoinery.com or find me on LinkedIn. You can book time with me on my website if you want to just have a quick 30-minute conversation. If you're interested in just bringing in someone to help, I've worked mostly— actually been working a lot of fintech clients the last kind of 2 or 3 years. They're going to be pretty vested in that world, but I love working with B2B, love working in startups. I have a very wide background, so there's hardly an industry that I won't take on. But if you are a founder that has been trying to just have your messaging, your naming stick, and you're also trying to really get your employees on board, particularly if you're in the Bay Area, absolutely love to talk to you. Just do a free 30-minute call, see what's going on. I've worked in all types of marketing, public relations, advertising. I worked in advertising at Meta, so I know how that engine runs. Email marketing, social, very lucky I've covered it all, so I have a big toolbox for marketing. I'm happy to get any companies up and running.