Creating Authentic, Memorable, 'Fun' Content for 'Not Fun' Industries [HubHeroes, EP77]
Liz Morehead and Max Cohen discuss how B2B companies in regulated industries can create engaging content without sacrificing authenticity. They cover building scalable content systems, matching formats to your strengths, and why humanized content acts as a digital handshake that actually helps sales.
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Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack, Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliate, affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
Hello, Maximilian.
Hi. It's just us.
It's just us.
It's only us today. You want to know what I'm saying?
Chaos Gremlins. What are you snacking on? What?
You hear the crunch?
I do hear the crunch. Is it Cheetos?
Nope.
What is it?
It's not a traditional snack, but it's like one of my favorite snacks of my entire life.
What is it?
Oh, no, this. This is. I get that.
What is that?
This is a Chatham Village. A Chatham Village garlic butter crouton.
Okay, see, I would shame you for that. However. However, Trader Joe's used to sell rosemary sprinkled croissant croutons.
Hold on.
What?
Say that one more time. Rosemary and what?
Rosemary croissant croutons. Did they ever get near a salad? Absolutely not. They went directly into my fat chaos.
How do you do a. I don't get it. How do you do a croissant crouton? Or wait. Well, I guess you chop up a crouton and you make croissants out of it.
No, you chop up a croissant and make croutons out of it.
Did I say it backwards?
Yes. You go collect all the croutons from.
The crouton tree and you fold them into a nice buttery, soft croissant. I'm pretty sure these are just made from toast.
Yep, you can see. Welcome back to Hub Heroes, everybody. Where? We're going to sit here and talk about snacks.
Yeah.
Do you think George will ever leave us alone again?
No. Nope.
Fantastic.
This is a one time only, one time only engagement. This podcast is an nft.
We swear it's worthwhile. Its value is limitless and zero.
Yeah. The alpha and the omega. Goose egg.
Can you imagine if somebody is hearing this? Welcome back to Hub Heroes. I'm your host, Liz Morehead, and I'm joined today by Max Cohen. And we are the only. This is the first time you've encountered Hub Heroes. This is gonna be great.
This is gonna be the worst.
No, it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great.
It's gonna be great. It's going to be great because. Yes. Okay. Are we the Chaos demons.
Yeah.
Of Hub Heroes?
Yes.
Yes.
100%.
Does our producer, Noah, often have to listen with a much closer ear whenever you and I open our mouths.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes. Are we proud of that? Yes.
Yes. Absolutely. I was gonna say yes. Yep, 100%.
Now, the one thing I will say, though, because we're not just gonna sit here and talk about snacks the whole time. Although I would totally do a snacks podcast with you, Max. I feel like we are Venn diagram.
On snacks would be, my God, just a perfect circle.
Just really one perfect, seamless circle. But the other thing we share in common is that we are unabashed, unapologetic content creators.
Yes.
And so that's what we're going to be talking about today, because we are surrounded by people in our industry and in different industries who believe that they are too boring for creative content, or their industries are too boring, or they're scared to show their personality because it'll be unprofessional or da, da, da. So that's cop out. Yep. That's what we're going to be talking about today. In fact, Max, I want to go ahead and just jump into this first question. Okay.
Yeah.
What do you think is the reason why people really say it's hard to create exciting and engaging content for their boring industries? Is that actually true?
Well, if we break it down, it's hard to create content. Sure. It is hard. It's not, like, easy by any means. Like, whenever I'm going back to my unpacking my trauma chest of being an implementation specialist, back when HubSpot was just the marketing hub. Right. And you always get to that awkward point where it's like, all right, cool, your DNS records are set up, you've connected your subdomain, your email setting domain, we're good to go. And then we need to go make a campaign. And they're like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, we got to make an offer. We Got to make something that people actually want to give you the email address for, not just do a, you know, contact us page. And they're like, what? Sales guy didn't tell me that? And I'm like, yeah, we got to make content. And they're like, what does that word mean? And I'm like, you know what I mean? And, like, it's. You know, I always told people, I was like, listen, all the stuff that, like, we're doing when we're, like, setting up HubSpot and doing stuff and HubSpot, that's the easy part. Like clicking the buttons, figuring out, you know, how to make a conversion path and write a blog post and link to it and CTAs and, like, all this stuff. That's easy. But then there was always, like, the awkward, you know, hey, man, if you're not creating what people are actually looking for, they have no reason to find it in the first place, right? It's like, very awkward physics truth that we all have to, you know, come to realize. And obviously, people in the sales process aren't thinking about that whatsoever, right? And, you know, even I hate to, you know, call it HubSpot Academy, but, like, you know, even when HubSpot Academy would be doing stuff like, you know, doing the whole marketing software certification, they're kind of just like, assuming that you're already creating all this great content that you're plugging into this machine you're building, right? And it was almost as if, like, a lot of people, like, wanted to stay away from the fact that, like, content runs this whole thing, right? But no one wanted to say this is the hard part, because it is like, you know, back when it was blog writing, like, putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboards or, like, whatever it is, right? And actually creating something that you think somebody's looking for. Never mind all, like, the technical SEO stuff. Like, you could have the most well optimized, beautiful, great, amazing page. You know that a search engine knows exactly what it's about, right?
All that.
But still, if no one's, like, looking for that content, no one's gonna search for it, even though it's really easy to find because you did really good SEO or something like that, right?
Oh, yeah. Well, this has always been the big flaw of our industry. You know, I remember when I first joined the inbound world. It reminded me a lot. Do you remember the south park episode with the underpant gnomes?
Yeah, totally.
And it's like, step one, steal underpants.
Yep.
Step two, question mark.
Yep.
Step three, profit yeah, that's always actually how I felt when I was in the inbound world. So when I started in inbound marketing in 2014, I actually wasn't coming in as a content specialist. I was hired into my agency. Yes, because I could write, but I was brought in as a marketing generalist. It was only later on that I niched down. And it was because, like, to be. And I say this with all love and reverence for our big orange sprocket overlords, but we have a, a serious problem in the inbound marketing space in general, which is that we make assumptions, A, about content existing in the first place, B, people knowing how to do it well, and C, turning a complete blind eye to the fact that content is probably where organizations hurt the most for a variety of reasons. I mean, we're relying on scores of professionals to hearken back to their days in elementary school and middle school, where. And a conclusion is the summary of what we said in the rest of the essay. Like, we're still treating content in a way as not a separate discipline. Like, one of the biggest things I see in organizations is the problem is, you know, they're sitting there worrying about whether or not they have the ability or the wherewithal or the lack of fear gremlins to put personality in their content. But the big problem is they do not know how to build a content machine inside their organization. Yeah, they don't know how to do. They don't know what it means to have a sustainable scalable content operations where you're not reinventing the wheel every single time you have to create a piece of content. Yeah, you know, we're. And we're asking people to do more dimensional content than ever before. Like, it used to be the pain was only felt in blogs, but now we're asking people to get in front of the camera and make video scripts and be on podcasts and do all these different things.
Like, we got to do a podcast because everyone else is doing a podcast. We got to start making short form video because I see all these, you know, folks doing TikToks and stuff about, like, our product and da, da, da, da. Yeah, there's a lot of, like, pressure. Again, it's the same idea back when it was like, oh, we got to do SEO, we got to do SEO, we got to do SEO. What does that mean? I don't know. Everyone's saying we have to do it and all these companies are trying to sell it to me. So, like, we have to do it. And it's like like you're, you're forgetting the basic physics about why someone goes to the Internet, right? And like, why? So content will always be something that, no matter what, that's a trend that will never die, right? Oh, 100, like it can't, right? They're like there, there isn't a reason for you to go on the Internet besides content, right? And content can be anything, but it needs to be something that you want to consume and you want to do. Like a reason to go somewhere. It's the same reason why it's like bait, right? For a, you know, a mouse wants to eat, it's going to eat the cheese, it's going to want the cheese, it's going to go search for the cheese and consume the cheese, right? Us as humans, right, we need content that's going to help us like solve our problems and overcome certain challenges, even if they're very small or even if they're very big, right? You know, and I think the, the problem is, is like a lot of people just don't make that calculation that like the content someone wants is not buying something from me. The content someone wants is things that actually mean something to them and actually help them solve a problem. Whether that problem is, I am bored, right? And I need to go mindlessly scroll TikTok for content to feed my boredom, right? That is a, like being bored. I want to see cute pictures of cats. That is a goal. It's a micro goal, but it's something you want to do. And you're not going to like stop the search for cute cat pictures until you satiate that need for that content, right? But you know, same thing goes for I, you know, am a person who has a job and I have a problem, right? I have challenges. I mean, I have goals, but I have challenges that are getting in the way. For me to see whatever success looks like in my job or what success looks like in my life, or what success looks like, you know, 10 minutes ago where I was like, I want a salty buttery snack and I went and found my croutons, right?
God bless croutons.
People always need stuff, right? The Internet is just a place to go to get that stuff, right? And I think like we forget and we just hyper focus and think like, you know, is the place to go to buy our products. It's like, no, it's not. It's. It's a way you can sell your product, sure, right? But the, the raw physics of it, again, like I talk about inbound physics all the time is that People use search engines to find what they are looking for. And if you're not creating what people are looking for, they have no reason to find you. Right? The cheese is never going to get eaten if the mouse isn't looking for the cheese. Right? Mouse is always looking for the cheese. But you know what I'm saying?
Especially this mouse. I freaking love cheese. All right, let's, let's dig a little bit deeper in here because one of the things that we mentioned at the top of this discussion is that it's not just the pain of content creation in general, like in a broad sense, right? There's also this distinct aversion, particularly from folks who are consider themselves to be in quote, boring industries or super hyper regimented industries, where it's a. We can't show any personality, we can't have any fun, we can't do any of these things. There is a distinction. Fear. There is a distinct aversion. Why do you think people are afraid and should they be?
Well, I think it's, it's, it's one. If you're working at a company at which the company produces some sort of product or service or something that is not something that you are inherently interested in, it's very easy to say, oh, this is boring, and no one's going to care about it because I, I don't care about it. Right? And so, you know, the, the, that's kind of like a classic thing. It's like, you know, one person's yuck is another person's yum or like, you know, kind of whatever. I think, like, what folks forget is like, hey, if we were able to get to the point where we created a business that sells a product that solves a problem, someone has, well, guess what? There's other people that's going to be interested in your shit because they have those problems, right? Like interesting, the word interesting. Like what interests me, right? I think people kind of, they look at that word and they kind of like break it down into like, what just personally interests me, what are my hobbies, what are the things that I like to do. Right? But you got to remember that like, interesting could mean, oh, this is an interesting way I've found to solve a problem, or this is an interesting way to look at a certain challenge I have. Or this is an interesting way to achieve some kind of goal that I have, even if it has nothing to do with like your personal interests, right? So like, people forget there's folks out there that, you know, could potentially buy your product, right? But they don't know they need your product. They don't know your, you know, you even make, your company even exists, right? They don't even know that, you know, you sell whatever you sell, right? But they're looking for ways to solve goals and challenges that they have. And when they find little bits of that puzzle that can teach them something or get them, you know, over the hump or get them closer to achieving one of that challenge is that is interesting to them. Right? And I think, you know, should I we talk about the boring industry thing? I don't know if we need to remind folks again because I've yelled it probably 38 times while you and me have had these like side conversations around boring content. Need we remind everybody listening. They made crab fishing very interesting, didn't they? Right?
Yeah.
Like before, you know, Deadliest Catch came out, who would ever have thought crab fishing was cool, right?
Definitely not the crabs.
Yeah, yeah, definitely not the crabs, right? Or even the people eating the crabs, right? But what they were able to do is they were able to take something that may seem like a mundane job, right? And turn it into using just like documentation, right? That's all they're doing is they're just deploying documentation of your day to day work, right. And presenting it in a way that, that made it interesting, made all the intricacies of crab fishing industry, made all the drama of crab fishing industry interesting, right? You can do that, I think, with almost anything, right? Because behind any sort of business or product or whatever, there's people, there's a story, there can be humor, right? Because just like we sell to humans, right? And I always say, you're never B2B. You're always B to H, right? Because, you know, B2C. BH you're always selling to humans. You got to remember, behind the B, there's also humans too as well, right? And there's a multitude, billions of different ways that you can make whatever it is that you're doing interesting in some way, shape or form. But people don't really understand that yet. They'll watch, you know, Deadliest Catch and be like, oh, it's so cool, right? It's like, well, dude, why can't you do that about dental insurance or something along those lines, you know. So I think it's just we're trained to kind of feel like, ah, I'm not really interested in like, you know, what my company does or what we do. It's hard for me to get excited about it. So it's very easy to have These mental blocks that someone else can't get excited about it. Right. I get very lucky having worked at HubSpot now working at a company that builds stuff on HubSpot, that it's easy for me because I think all this stuff is really cool and it's like my whole personality and I love talking about it. Right. That's not the same for everybody at their job. Most people hate like a lot of people hate their job, right. So it's going to be hard for them to like willingly go out and be like, oh, let me make all this awesome content about this thing that I love so much. Because they probably, you know, vast majority of people aren't in that situation. Right. So I can understand, I guess, how people would, you know, immediately jump to the conclusion of the business that we're in is boring and there's no way we can make interesting content about it. But the fact of the matter is it's just not true.
Yeah, it's interesting when I, when I reflect on my experience. So after I niched down into being a content manager back then at Quintain, which was a small agency in Annapolis, then I went on to become the editor in chief at Impact, which is a diamond HubSpot partner agency. And I ran all of our publishing for a few years and now I work on my own, but also with George as well. I've spent a lot of time not only educating people about content, but also creating content. And this is where it gets really funny, Max. I think sometimes people will look at people like you and like me. Yeah, well, you guys are different. You get to have fun. You're in a different industry. We ma', ams, sirs and all others, we work in B2B marketing and sales with long sales cycles and deal sizes that are in the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you think we're not working in an industry where us being taken seriously for our expertise does not matter, you really need to reevaluate how it is that you are looking at us and perceiving us and what it is that we do. Because when I think about what the real fears are that are driving people to say, well, we just can't do it. It usually comes down to a few things. One, the thing that people won't say out loud is that they don't want to get rejected for being themselves for being a whole ass human being and being the person who puts themselves out there only to get rejected in some way by someone or disagreeing with them on public, on the Internet for. For someone getting upset for upsetting their boss, for putting yourself out there. And for some. And for some reason, when you show yourself fully and allow yourself to be seen, it is rejected in some way. Another fear that I see quite a bit is something that you just spoke to, right? It's that, well, we can't do it because this is our industry and we. And we can't and we're not allowed. You are, you are. And one of the reasons when I was at Impact that I was such a hard ass about, like, if I can put anybody else's name on this piece of content, we've got a problem. Like, that was one of the things that I taught and I was very much a hard ass about. And the reason why is this one of my favorite things that would happen is that. So there was a long period of time where I worked with subject matter experts across our entire company in paid ads, sales, video, marketing, standard inbound market, like all of these different disciplines. And we created dense pillar guides where they would showcase their personality, we would put their faces on it, we would do all of these things. So it would serve the purpose that we wanted, right, of driving search traffic. Because it was a basic pillar page topic cluster strategy, generating leads. Because it was also a premium downloadable offer. Like we could still see the whole thing on the page, but we gave you the option to download it as well. But then our sales team started doing something really interesting. They would take a link to a pillar page. I remember one specifically, it was for paid ads and it was featuring two guys named Jason Lindy and Dan Bomb. And they were just rock stars at paid ads at Impact at the time. And our sales guy Mark said to this prospect, hey, this guide is a really great showcase of the depth and and width of our expertise in this area. But it will also give you a chance to get to know Jason and Dan, the two guys you will be working with. Because if we think about the deals that we lose so often, particularly in B2B, the worst way to lose it is that ineffable. It was a. It was a better culture fit, which really means the other guy got them to like them faster. So I like to think of content as like that digital handshake where you get to be as human as possible and give them the experience of being with you in their content. That's why I think it's so profitable. That's why I think it's so powerful. But there is a fear wrapped up in that of, well, is it even worth it? Is it really worth putting it out there? The Last Fear that I think is really important to talk about, and I know we're going to dig more deeply into this in our conversations. People think, well, I'm not funny enough. When did we say you had to be funny? We're just asking you just be human beings. Yeah. Max and I act this way because we show up at a thousand percent in our lives, and it's probably best that you know that up front. Let's, let's know. We're not gonna do bait and switch. You need to know this. This is who we are.
No, I know it's weird. I've had, you know, I've, I've had people have, like, private conversations with me and say, like, oh, you know, I want to be able to do content. Like, I love what you do. I'd love to be able to, you know, do, like, videos and stuff like that. But, like, you know, I'm just not funny. I don't know how to, like, have your charisma or, like, do they? And it's just like, you know, you don't need to, like, no one said you had to go make a bunch of stupid tiktoks about something. Like, there's a million and a half other ways that you can make content. Right? The reason I chose video as my primary tool to create content is I, I, I, I could barely read, never write, nevermind.
Right?
You know what I mean? Like, I chose the delivery method that worked best for me so I could have a little bit less. What is it? Decision paralysis or decision fatigue or, like, whatever, or, you know, it was just, you know, I at a very, very quickly realized written content's not going to be my thing. Right. I tried to write like a couple of blog posts on LinkedIn and I'm just like, this is my wife's the 8th grade English teacher, not me, right? And, like, it's way easy for me to like, spit some crazy stuff into a video, right? And do it that way, you know, So I played to my strengths, right? Like, if you don't think you're charismatic in front of a camera, try podcasts, try written content, try visual content. You can, you can deliver your message and deliver value in other ways that aren't video, Right? And you shouldn't try to force yourself either into delivering content in a specific way if you know it's going to have a negative impact on the quality of it, all right? You should deliver it in the most quality way that's easiest for you to replicate. And do as much as you can.
You can also build systems. And so to the content managers and content strategists or the business owners out there who are listening to this, who have content nerds under your roof, you can also have. So one of my clients is in a similar situation, right. And we had. They're. They're incredible commute verbal communicators. They are incredible speakers. They are an undeniable peerless expert in their industry. Like, the. The way this guy communicates is absolutely incredible. He does not have the time to sit down and write, and when he does, it ends up looking more like an outline. And then we got into this weird situation where, like, he was now running out of time to actually just sit down and be interviewed with me so I could go straight with him. So we came up with this great system where I would give him a bunch of topics and I would say, by the way, these are the questions I'm going to ask. I would ask you. And this is the order in which I would ask them. Here are the things you need to say at the beginning. Here are the things you need to say at the end. If you film this video, we can use it as video content. And then I can also translate this into a written blog article. So the moral of the story for my content nerds out there and the business owners who oversee content nerds is that if you have people like Max, if you have experts who, you know are not going to sit down and be the writers, it is incumbent upon you to create systems that support that. It is part of our job to empower people to communicate in the ways that make the most sense for them.
Mm.
And I think that's really important.
Yeah. And I think, you know, it. A lot of this takes experimentation, right? Like, yes. You're never going to nail it at the beginning. I never did. And I don't think anyone has ever been successful nailed it at the beginning on their first try either, right?
Oh, not at all. In fact, Nick from Fargo put that just in one of his comments. He said, fear of getting low to no traction is such a perceptual barrier that holds me back a lot. We have a live audience if you ever want to join us when we record community. Hubheroes.com so I love that he brought that up and that you're pointing to that, because at the beginning. Can we talk about the first video I ever did for Impact? Because I had spent years being a writer, and then the pandemic forced me when I took over the video program. When I took over the video program, it was right before the pandemic. I'm like, this is great. I can delegate. And then the pandemic happened, and so I had to film everything. And the first video I ever did is a hi, I'm Liz, of impact. Do you want to know what it's like to work with a HubSpot? It was. It was like worse than Stepford Wife. And it took practice, but I would say, Max, even now, not everything is a hit. This is all about the at bats. No, this is you. Yeah, talk to me about it.
And it's never going to be at the beginning, right? It's a. If, if, if, you know, if you look at someone being successful, it always starts small and then it grows big, right? So it's like low and no traction at the beginning is what you should exactly expect. Like, that's the. That's. I mean, that's just. It's always. It's not. Don't fear it. Know that that's always going to be the case regardless of if you're successful or not. Right? You know, So, I mean, I think if you can kind of like get that, you know, get, get over that piece and start to say, hey, you know, the beginning of it is always going to be an experiment, right? And you're going to be in this experimenting phase for a long time because that's how literally any successful anything starts is by failing over and over again until you figure out what works. I mean, that was. I was just explaining this concept to my, my kid the other day because she was getting really mad that her drawings weren't good, right? And I was like, she, she's like. And she was like, cutting up her drawings and she's like, I keep making mistakes. And I'm like, listen, like, learning is literally just making mistakes until you make less mistakes. Like, that's the, that's the whole process. Like, how do you know what to do if you don't know what not to do, right? It's a process of elimination. Like, that's what learning is and that's what experimenting is, right? Especially when you're talking about any sort of content creation. So it's like, not only do you got to experiment with the ways that you feel comfortable delivering and creating and deploying content, you also got to remember, you got to experiment with the ways that your audience likes to consume it, right? You might have an audience that's particular to reading. Depending on the, you know, subject matter, you might have an audience that just wants to consume it all via video. You might have an audience that has an audience that has a healthy mix of both. So you'll try to figure out ways to kind of deploy tactics in both ways. You can make videos that you don't appear on. Right. Like, especially with so much. So many of the cool tools today, like Descript and stuff. And like, I'm Ryan Gunn from Aptitude 8, sent me a. A LinkedIn message the other day being like, bro, I just use Content Hub to write the script for a podcast and post it to HubSpot. And it created the entire thing for me. And I didn't even speak the words right. Like, you know, you can do audiograms into script. There's so many different ways to, like, build content in a way that other people like to consume it, even if you're not comfortable building it in that way. Right.
Yeah. I would say also, though, one of the things that people need to keep in mind as they're going through this process is that. And this was particularly true for me when I first started writing in the content marketing context. Mine was very much that you may want to consider, like, kind of like.
Very normal, like, consideration stage content.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that and also just like, I'm going to sound like everybody else. Right. And then I started to get more experimental with my writing and people would respond to it, and that was really cool. As I started doing more videos and I started doing a lot more public speaking, which. Public speaking, by the way, if you're going to conferences and you're speaking about the things that you do and sell, that is also a form of content. Or the way I show up on this podcast, it was always wrong about what people would connect with and be attracted to. You know, I still have people who come to me as clients today who remember me from the online courses, videos that I used to do for Impact, that are still there about content management and creating memorable content. And I. If I had listened to my instincts about the parts that I needed to repress or emphasize, I was usually wrong. People liked that I was a little bit nerdy. I have one client right now who I met through George, who said, you do a lot of crazy shit. And I'm sitting there like, is this supposed to be a sales call?
Yeah.
And he's like, but you're out there and you're just not. You're not gonna apologize for. For yourself and who you. And I'm like, absolutely not. And what was funny is that, you know, again, this is all about being honest about who you are and being true to yourself. Because my, My, My foil impact was a guy who worked with me, he's still there, named John Becker. And that man, bless him, is my perfect balance. Right. Like, he. He's like NPR come to life. He's. His humor is dry in a good way. He's, you know, where I'm loud and boisterous and big like he is. Balanced, measured. Former English teacher at a girls all prep school, you know, or all girls prep school. Like, you just have to be authentically yourself. And he still brought the same level of impact that I did, but in his own unique way. And people responded to that part about him. The fact that we had a big contrast to each other is also something that was very beneficial to us. And when I think about me personally, there were things where it was like, yeah, I don't always take myself seriously, but you better be damn sure I take what I do very seriously. I get this heated and I get this excited about topics like this because I care.
Yeah.
This is what I love to do.
Yeah.
So, Max, let's talk about your journey a little bit. You've already touched upon this a bit. You spend a lot of time creating content for a B2B sales and marketing space. And once again, we want to emphasize this. We have real jobs that require us to make actual money and be taken seriously for our authority in what we do and what we sell. Right. How do you approach it and what can others learn from it? Because I follow you on TikTok, I follow all of your videos. I actually knew about you that way before you and I started, before I joined this podcast. And I just remember being like, can this guy teach a class? Like, this was so human, so simple, so direct, like the stuff you would teach about, like, CRMs and new HubSpot product updates. Because when I started following you, it was back when you were at HubSpot. So talk me through that a little bit.
Yeah, well, I mean, lucky for me, I did teach some classes running the new hire training program there. So I had a little bit of a. I guess a little bit of a head start on it. But no, it's like, I think that the thing that I realized, like, very quickly is, like, this whole CRM thing, this whole HubSpot thing, it's not businesses that are behind it, it's people that are using it. Right. And, you know, I had noticed a lot of things and observed a lot of situations that I found, like, inherently hilarious and relatable. Right. And, you know, I kind of Approached it being like, listen, you know, I'm not making content for businesses. I'm making content for the human beings that work at this businesses that, that also use this thing that I'm intently, intimately familiar with, right? And just kind of like understanding, you know, I don't think that differently from them, right? So, like, they're going to find this stuff funny that I find funny, and I'm going to use that as sort of like my formula to kind of like express myself, right. You know, so really it was like all about remembering kind of what it was like with all my interactions with folks doing implementation, right? And seeing people use it in really bad ways, seeing people use it in really good ways, Just funny situations that, you know, I knew someone else who used HubSpot would be able to relate late too, because I observed it multiple times, right. You know, and I think a lot of it was a lot of like my own journey. Doing a lot of that was like me trying to like, test to see if other people kind of thought the same way about it than I did, right? Because, like, I had a lot of my own thoughts and feelings around HubSpot and like, you know, who was actually using it and kind of the way I kind of built mental map about it in my head and what I valued and what I didn't value, like in the tool, right. And more nuanced ways of using certain pieces. And, you know, I almost think a part of it because again, like, I wasn't in a marketing role. Like, I was literally doing this for fun, right? Because, like, I was really into it. I think of a part of it was like trying was me trying to do this, like, exercise to see if other people thought about it the same way I did, right. And, and felt about it the same way I did and thought the same stuff was funny about it than I did. Right. And once I quickly realized that, like, you know, I'm actually more connected with all these people than I think I am. Right. And like, I'm not alone in my ways of, like, thinking about it, approaching it and talking about it and feeling about it and all that kind of stuff, it made it much easier for me to kind of like go down that rabbit hole, if you will, of like, continuing to express myself around it, right. So, like, that was kind of like my journey. But like, I think the, the when it comes down to like, oh, well, like, you know, how does this like, help HubSpot from like, you know, a product perspective or like selling it or getting more people excited about it, you know, I. I felt that if I could communicate what I was, you know, excited about, I had kind of confirmed that I know other people kind of think the same way. And I could use that as a tool to get other people stoked or maybe even to look at HubSpot in a slightly different way that they were looking at before. Right. And do that using the most easy way for me to produce. That was just, you know, doing the tick tock thing. I didn't want to sit down and like, edit video for a super long time. I didn't have time to do that. I was like, I was. I had babies at the time that this was happening, right? So it's like I. There was no long hours sitting in front of, like, final cut or something that I had to spare, right. I had to find quick ways of getting it out there and then seeing what the reaction was and then kind of like building off of that, you know? So, yeah, I mean, my journey was really just like a whole bunch of, like, experimentation. None of it was structured. There was no grand plan behind any of it. It was more so me kind of taking advantage of the fact that I got lucky enough to really, really like what I was doing. Right. However, I do think it resonates with people because of the same formula I talk about all the time, right? People have certain goals and challenges they're trying to accomplish, right? So when I think of who my audience is, that's folks in the HubSpot community, right? They're looking for ways to solve goals and challenges that they have. So the little mental formula I always do in my head when I create a piece of content that I want to be a good piece of content, right? Because again, I have my very hardline definition of what a good piece of content means. It's something that when you consume it, you get closer to achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge, right? And what I'll tell people when they're saying, like, well, how do I know if this content's good? Say that does. Does whatever I'm producing, does this thing they're reading, does this thing they're listening to, does this thing that they're looking at with their eyeballs and having thoughts about, right? Does it do one of those two things? Closer to the goal, overcome the challenge. And I knew my content was doing that because a lot of it was inspired by stuff that I realized may have been difficult to do in the tool, stuff that I knew people were trying to accomplish in the tool that people have had trouble with in the Past. Right. And I started creating fun ways of saying, this is how you solve that problem. Pretty simple, right?
Well, the best part is that they'll tell you too. Like if you, if you do this type of content once, like, I'm just gonna put myself out there once. I'll put it out there once. It experience and see and see if it works. That's not how it works. It works as a cumulative effect. Right. Because the best part is when you do it consistently, people will tell you, oh, wow, that was really helpful. They will accost you at conferences and say, oh my God, it's so good to meet you. I remember I had somebody at Inbound walk up to me. I wrote our newsletter called the latest at Impact for my God. It was for two years. I wrote a newsletter three times a week. My God, mining for con. And we were really emphasizing at that point, we're putting, we're putting the letter back and newsletter. Right. Putting a lot of personality into it. And you know, we had, we had a really great following. We had 70,000, like lifetime subscribers and about 45,000 of those were actual active reading subscribers over the lifetime of the newsletter, which is pretty good for an agency.
Yeah.
And I remember there was this one time this girl came up to me at Inbound, like she knew me and was like, hey, Liz, how's Pumpkin, your cat? Hi. Straight, so nice to meet you. We ended up having a fantastic conversation. But the thing is, is that people will start to tell, man, that was really helpful. Or your sales team will be like, this will help you get to know Jason and Dan when you read this Google Ads thing. I have. We have people who probably still come to both of us this day about content we made months or years ago. It made a difference. It helped me out. There is a long tail impact when you take this type approach to your content.
Yeah. And I think the other thing too is I don't want people to listen to this and be like, well, Max, you were in a, you know, an advantageous position that most businesses or marketing teams aren't in, where you really enjoyed what you were doing. So, like, you did this for fun. And then it caught on. Right. That same process I followed. Like a marketing team can do that. Like the marketing team can have that journey on behalf of the business. And the business is just me in this case. Right. Like, you guys can start by just experimenting with stuff and see what resonates with your audience. Not everything has to be a home run. In fact, almost everything should be failures. So you can figure out what not to do as fast as possible. It's all process of elimination. Right.
Well, the other thing, too, is that, like, you could say that about both of us. Liz and Max, you were in this advantageous position. You were given the tools of. No. Do you know what we did? We woke up one day and said, well, if we're going to be doing this, we might as well, like, enjoy ourselves. Or we just. For me, it was a little bit different. It was more like, well, if I stopped turning on the filter to make myself sound like everybody else, and I just started being myself in everything I did. I mean, it was as a lazy person. It's way more efficient. I'm exerting way less energy just being 100% myself. But you know how many of the things I did at Impact were as a result of ask for forgiveness, not permission? The unhinged videos that I did. It's not that Bob Ruffalo and Marcus Sherrington wouldn't have been supportive. They were. But there. We made music videos, we did off the wall shit where we were just like, hey, what if we just tried this out?
Mm.
But it all started with us taking micro steps. I'm just gonna tell a personal story in this blog article. I'm just gonna be perfectly honest that the reason why I'm writing this article is because six months ago, I told you this was true. And after six months of experimentation, I regret to inform all of you that I was wrong. I'm the wrongest wrong since the wrong came to Wrongtown. Now, let's talk about what I've learned in the past six months. Like it. There, there. We weren't in an advantageous position. We just did it.
Yeah. And. And here's the other thing. Like, I want people to, like, I want to be very, very clear about me being, like, super into HubSpot and, like, absolutely, like, loving it and, like, making it my own personality. That's not, like, a thing. That's just, like, unique to me. I am a product of my experience working at HubSpot. Right. HubSpot did a really, really, really good job at getting their people excited about the thing they built and excited about understanding the impact that it had on people that worked these businesses we were selling it to. Right. And it was really easy through my exposure to see that. Right. They also did a great job with their culture. Like, it was a fun place to work. I grew to quickly fall in love with HubSpot very quickly. Right. And all of that added to it. Right? There are things leadership At a business and managers and product people or whoever, there's things you can do to communicate to the folks who work for you why that thing you build is the shit and why they should care about the people you sell it to, right? You can communicate that in a number of different ways. You can communicate that just in the way that you treat your customers right and, you know, set your business up in a way that isn't just like a scam, trying to, you know, squeeze as much money out of people as, you know, possible and actually like, building a culture around, you know, how do you make your customers successful versus how do you just drain their wallets, right? You know, you can get people really stoked about the positive impacts that your product can have on someone because people like doing good things for people, right? Like, if you think about it, that's kind of really what comes down to, like, the core of it for me is like, I like doing good things for people. The best way that I've learned to be able to, you know, scratch that itch as much as possible, is showing how they can do some dope shit inside a HubSpot and make their professional lives better and make them look like a rock star internally at their company or build something really cool that saves them time or, you know, do something that, you know, makes a sales rep's life better or the marketer's life better so they can, you know, focus on doing more of the hard stuff and not get so bogged down with, like, their CRM, right? That's like, it feels good for me knowing that I can do that for other people, right? But HubSpot did a really good job at showing me how I could have that impact, right? If you've no idea, like, what people use your product for, you know, and, like, the positive effect it can have on them, it's going to be really, really hard for you to want to go out and do that on your own, right? And a lot of that comes from the top down. You can't just, like, assume you're gonna, like, have employees gonna be like, whoa, wait, whoa, wait a minute. This thing is sick. It's actually really fun talking about this thing, right? This software that we have. Like, you can't just assume, like, you're gonna get these folks that kind of figure it out on their own and then get super excited about it. Like, there's things you can do, you know, to. To help promote that, right? And you do that through your culture, through the way you treat your customers, through, you know, being Able to communicate why you're doing certain things to your product and understanding the problems that it's actually solving and talking to, you know, like making sure, like your, you know, frontline employees or the marketers or whoever feel well connected to the folks that you're trying to sell to and understand the problems that they actually have and why this thing is so great and it solves it because of xyz, right? And then people feel like that your product has like a sense of purpose, right? And oh, I'm marketing this thing for a reason. I'm selling it for a reason. It's going to create positive outcomes in people's lives. And that feels good, right? You know, just like getting a paycheck feels good and stuff like that.
You know, you, you dig into something that I think is a really important way to, to cap off our conversation here because one of the things I've seen a lot of organizations wrestle with is this idea of, well, how can we have a cohesive brand voice if we're just allowing all of our people to sound however they want? Okay, so if we want to break this down in a very tactical way, as someone who has, I managed it for one company, I now manage this for clients. The division is very simple. If it is a website page or a piece of content that is written by that omniscient third person narrator that is written in your brand's voice and tone, if it has a specific person's name on it, like a blog article or it's a video that they're starring in, guess what, cupcake? They get to show up and should show up as the whole ass human version of themselves. Now I always find this fascinating because. And I get where the cognitive dissonance can come in or why people feel there's some sort of disconnect. Well, how can we provide a cohesive brand experience if we're giving multiple different experiences in our content of what we sound like? What makes your company great is the thing that every single freaking company tells me makes them great. Our people are our greatest differentiators. Stop hiding them. If that is what you believe, then prove it. But also, number two, you have to remember providing a cohesive brand experience to your end users, your visitors, your customers. It's very confusing if every single website page is written by a different person. But if they're experiencing something that has someone's specific name on it and it sounds like them, and it's written in the first person and they're using personal stories to illustrate experiences, concepts, examples and things like that and their unique voice and tone, that's fine. Because the thing that unifies all of your people isn't the fact that they walk, talk, and sound the same. That it's. It's not uniformity. It's that you are a harmonious symphony of different people from different walks of life, from different levels of expertise, from different niche areas of subject matter. Like. But you're all united around a single vision of what is possible. You all carry within you the same core values, in theory. So as long as you're expressing a commitment to the same values, as long as you are expressing that shared vision, it doesn't matter if every single byline and every single person sounds different. They should. That is called being human. So that's where that kind of division comes in. And I think, as we think, you know, we started this conversation today talking about, you know, the start of Inbound, the genesis of inbound, and how far we've come with content. The other reality is, is if we want to talk about this from a profitability perspective, guys, everyone's creating content now. Everyone is creating content. You are not new. You are not unique for doing it. So how are you going to create content in a way that people remember that not only that, you gave them the answer they were looking for, that you were the ones who did it. Yeah, humanity. And. And this is even particularly true now that we have AI running amok in a bunch of organizations. That's creating what we were talking about, what, a few episodes ago, Max, more people than ever saying, well, that was clearly written by AI. Like, the BS meter of your viewers, your visitors, your readers, your whomever. It is even higher than before. It is incumbent upon you to bring your humanity, your authenticity, your personality to everything you do now. Your profitability depends on it. This isn't just about having fun at work. This is. This is what you need to be. This is how you need to show up.
Yeah. And I think also, like, you got to think about the way that, you know, companies interact with brands online, right? Like, especially in a space like LinkedIn, no one gives a shit about talking to your company page. And your company page isn't really talking back to people, right? Like, sure, maybe it's commenting on something here or there, but that's, like, totally different than, like, creating a product or a service or a business that, like, your employees can rally behind and go out into your respective micro communities that you and your customers live in on LinkedIn and be like, man, if even the employees genuinely think cool and, like, they're going out there and talking about it and making content about it, and they're, you know, putting their own name on it. Right? Well, there must be something going on there, right? And, you know, people. You interact with people on social media channels, right? So you got to make sure, like, your people are enabled and empowered to do that when it comes to something like LinkedIn, right? Like, you're seeing this giant surge, especially in, I guess, like, what we would call, like, the B2B space of, like, employee advocates, right? Where, like, you'll see content creators that are like, SDRs or BDRs, like, at a company, you know, making a ton of, like, video content. It's like, dude, that's the way they're prospecting now, right there. It's like you're starting to see, like, SDR is kind of be like, maybe make less cold calls and maybe make More content on LinkedIn and go exist in those spaces and show people stuff and get them to want to talk to me.
