Everybody is Really a Content Creator with Clint Greenleaf

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell, and let's get going. I'm talking with Clint Greenleaf, and we're talking about winning. Clint is the founder of Greenleaf Publishing. He's built that, sold it, and now is working with. He's a CEO of Greenleaf Groups, and they're a consulting firm. They work Content Capital. Is that part of Greenleaf or what is Content Capital?

That's a separate company. So we are a content management firm, an asset manager for content. Right. So we help people with books and podcasts and live events, speaking businesses. We help them with audiobooks and print books and ebooks and all the different ways that people could share content.

So what does that mean?

It means that most content creators, and.

I'm saying that, Clint, because the purpose of the podcast here is to give people ideas about what to do to get ahead and move up and what will give you a competitive advantage or an edge. And one of those things, somewhere along the line is going to be putting your identity, your thoughts down in print. And that can be a calling card, that can be a door opener, that can be a huge thing. And if nothing else, the exercise of it allows you to become incredibly more focused yourself and clear about what you stand for, what matters to you. And so it's a great process to go through, although can be an incredibly incredible pain in the butt doing it. But what makes it easier is have someone to walk you through it. And so that's why I was going to ask you, because we'll have people listening to this, to say, you know, at some point, and by the way, you know, over the years I've sent you people, but it might have been after you sold.

I appreciate it. Anyway, I've still got a lot of friends who work there, and I wish them all the best. It's a great group of folks there. So Greenleaf is still pretty focused on bookstore distribution. That's still kind of the focal point for them. And my problem with the industry itself is that there's so much focus on the medium as if there's only one option for it, Right. So people think about in the context of I am a book publisher, or I am a audiobook publisher, or I am a podcaster, I am a speaker. And the problem is everybody is really a content creator, right? And the mistake that so many people like to make is that they think of themselves via one output mechanism. If you think of yourself only as a print book author. It means everyone who doesn't like print books because they like Kindle or audio books or whatever else is not going to share your content. Whereas if you think of yourself as an expert on auto mechanics, right, and you're the best auto mechanic whisperer in the world, and you can teach them how to run their business as well, you shouldn't focus on telling them the only way they're going to get your information is through your podcast. If there are people who want to read about it on stone tablets, you should be willing to create that in stone tablet form. And if there are people who are going to pay you good money to go out and listen to you speak live, that's great too. So we like to help people find the best mechanism for it. Think about music, right? So music taught us this lesson in the late 90s. If you're a musician and you used to be able to go out and sell records or LPs or however you do it, you'd make 20 bucks per. You get a couple bucks for it and royalties, and you can make a lot of money. And then Napster comes along and Napster later, itunes, but would go out and either give free music or really cheap music. And there's really no money left at the end for the content provider. So live events became a great way to do it. And now it's to the point that you can listen for free. With Spotify or Pandora or YouTube, you can listen to any song you want to for free. What people are paying for now is the experience. So if you're a Jimmy Buffett fan, you want to go to that concert. And even though you're going to spend 30 bucks for a beer and 60 bucks for a T shirt, it's the experience that you're paying for, right? He makes his money on that. Not on singing, selling one more song or one more album. And we like to focus on what is the ultimate goal of the content provider. And so for Jimmy, in that sense, it's make money selling a lifestyle brand. For some of our authors, that means growing their business, using it as a business card. Other people, it's just kind of sharing their wisdom in different areas. We like to figure out the core message of what they want, and then we help them turn that into an actual win for them. So, for example, Larry, if you decide you want to do a cookbook, I'm going to ask you. Great. Tell me more about why you want to do a cookbook. And if we find out that your ultimate win in this is that you want to open up a restaurant, that's fine. But that cookbook is different than a cookbook that you want because you really want to hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Right?

So our job is to help you find out the why, find out what a win looks like, and then help create the right content, the right way for it. If your audience is all spending all their time on YouTube watching videos, you probably don't need a book. You probably need a lot of great video that they can watch.

Well, I spent so much of my life in financial planning and working with middle income people and helping them say, what resources do you have? What do you want to have happen? And then show them the best vehicles to get there and use these similar products that I would have for myself. But similar in that the same way a fitness trainer works, you go into the gym, how much time do you have, what are your fitness goals? And it's really the same the way doctor's work. You know, you go in there, what's wrong, what needs to be fixed, here's what I recommend. And so you're doing that similar thing of finding the issue and helping them get there as quickly as possible. Like, you know, I've heard of sales, Clint, as sales. As you're at point A, you want to be at point B. And the purpose of a presentation, if you're making a sale and is to disturb them about being at point A and sell them on the idea of being at point B, you know, you really want to be at point B. And then C is you're the best, you're the solution to the best one to get them from point A to point B. And so the thing is, when you talk to people, you do consultations or do things like that, how do you help them work through those things?

Yeah, so we like to find out more about them. So we work with about 10% of the folks who come to us. We can't continue to work with everybody. Right. So if someone's goal is to be the next J.K. rowling, I probably can't help them with that. Right. So that's, there's a whole lot of coaching, there's a whole lot of publishing, but there's a hell of a lot of luck that happens in that model. Right. But if it's someone who wants to increase their market share in their dental practice by creating the best bit of content, best use of content, we can talk about that. And that may be TikTok videos, it could be A book, it could be a podcast, it could be billboards. Right. But my job is to figure out what they really want and if they want to take it from a $5 million practice to a $25 million practice, we try and figure out how best to do that. And in some cases that means we get a piece of the action along the way. In some cases we work for a fee, but if we can help them, great. In a lot of cases we don't. So we consult with people and chat and see if there's a way we can help. And if we can, that's wonderful. And if we can't, that's all right too.

And so do you have. The second step in that kind of follow through would be relationships with people who are like well versed in the TikTok or well versed in the billboards. And they have those kind of contexts. You have people that you can refer and we do.

Yeah, we've got a network of our own employees. We purchased a couple companies that help us provide that. We started a few others and we have referral partners. So the ones we don't do ourselves.

Yeah. And how many options would you say that are out there? The major options avenues that people could think of because you've rattled off, you know, billboards and you know, the social media, you go Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, et cetera. Twitter.

Yeah, it could be LinkedIn. Right. It could be a lot of different ways to create that. There's probably five or six good ones out there. Right. You've got audio, be it audio books or podcasts. You've got digital, which could be ebooks, workbooks, that sort of thing. There's print books, there's live events. Depending on how you do it, you can do online courses that may fit, you know, cross over some of these. A lot of these areas really can go, but. But it's really has to be customized because if we start thinking only in, for example, Kajabi, which is a great online course company, if you know you want an online course, you can probably go straight to Kajabi. But the question is, do you think you want an online course or do you know you need an online course? And if you think you're doing it because someone told you you should, that's probably not a good enough reason. The question is, does an online course get you what you want or are you just hoping that that's going to work? Right. Going back to your former employee, you mentioned the guy who was kind of a jerk to deal with, Right.

Right.

If someone tells him, oh, people don't like you in the office because you have bad breath. Great. You can buy him a thousand breath mints every day, he's still going to be a jerk. He can't fix that. So you got to make sure you're scratching the right itch. So we like to dig really deep and find out what that real need is, and then we assess the best options from there.

All right. Another company you've got is one that has to have an interesting story behind the name. Pigs and Bricks.

Yeah. So Pigs and Bricks. After I sold Greenleaf, I took my kids out to Hawaii. They were 4, 2, and 0 at the time. My son was a newborn, and I was so proud of myself because we sold the company and it was working, just a great day, and it was kind of a life changing moment for us. So my wife and I flew the kids out there, and they were sitting in first class seats on the way to Hawaii, and my daughters are watching Mickey Mouse on iPads, eating ice cream sundaes, and I'm breaking my arm trying to pat myself in the back about what a great dad I am. And I kind of looked over their heads and I saw coach seats, the rest of the plane. And I thought, you know, I got here by flying middle seats and coach to save a few bucks and crashing on friends couches and doing everything I could to save money early on. And my kids first experience is this opulent lifestyle that's not going to do me any good at all. I really want to go back and change this. So how do I make sure I raise kids who are not entitled little monsters? And that was a big deal to me. So what was supposed to be a fun trip to Hawaii, I basically ruined because I spent as much time as I could trying to find the silver bullet on how to teach kids about money. And see, this is the book that ended up writing. So this is Give, Save, Spend with the Three Little Pigs, which is the sequel to the Three Little Pigs story that we all grew up with. And it's the premise that kids can learn by beginning to become aware of money at a young age. So the Give, Save, Spend concept, you take money or allowance that kids get and you break it into three different piles. Some they give in donation form, some they save for a rainy day, and some they spend on stuff they like. And it begins financial education. So the premise was that the pig who built the brick house probably had the best plan. He wanted to teach his brothers how to continue doing this. Those pigs built brick houses for all the animals in the forest. They made a ton of money and they then decided they would help other people with their with their money as well. So I wanted to do that. And the process of this business has now been teaching parents how to talk about money with their kids and how to raise financially responsible children.

What a not, not a better thing for for someone to do, especially after a big business success, to kind of move in and make a contribution like that because it was right up your alley in terms of assembling the material. I want to talk more about that, but thanks for sharing all that. That's really a fascinating story and I think you probably got more, more, more to offer than you thought about when you sat down.

I appreciate the confidence. I had a lot of help the benefit of that book too. A buddy of mine, Phil Wilson, did the illustrations he illustrated for Disney and for Nickelodeon, so he's got some amazing skills. The most important part of a kid's book is beautiful illustrations. But if you're listening to this, take a look at the book and you'll see Phil's mastery. He did a great job in the.

Book that wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it at 1whiteLowinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening and do it big.