INBOUND Bold Talks: Joe Pulizzi "Two Little Things that Made All the Difference"

Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Oh, come on. I know I'm the last one up, but good morning. How are you? Have you. Have you ever heard of an introduction with more content marketings in it than that one? That was absolutely fantastic. I got chills, actually. No, I'm super excited. I know you have a lot of choices about places to go today, and I appreciate you being here. Jonathan and I were just talking about it. I appreciate you coming to this and getting a little bit more personal. I am going to talk to you about two little things that made all the difference in my life. My job here is to give you something useful. But I also want to do this from a personal standpoint. Obviously, this is what the bold talks are about. And I was thinking for me and influencing me, what are the best storytellers and speakers doing? Like, how did Steve Jobs go about telling stories? And when he spoke, of course, Richard Branson is a favorite of mine. Martin Luther King Jr. Maya Angelou. And of course, you can't have a list without putting Eminem on it. Hey, I'm not kidding. Like, when I'm running long distances, I need a little Eminem to get me going and motivated. I'm thinking it's personal and relevant. Very personal. All their stories are very personal, but also very relevant. So that's my job today, is to be both personal and relevant. You can do it. Aw. You can do it, right? You can do that. So I'm going to get personal on you. Okay, Maybe not all of you are cat lovers. So I had to throw a dog in there, right? And so as I was searching for imagery, you know, for some reason, these baby platypus came up here. I never saw that before. And I'm like, this is absolutely fantastic. So I had to throw that in there. Thanks for indulging into that process. So, two things. I'm going to tell you my personal story, and my goal is by the end of this to you, to consider using these two things in your daily life. So let me give you the little history lesson as we go. Graduated from Bowling Green State University, which is just south of Toledo, Ohio. I live in Any Cleveland, people. I'm from Cleveland. Oh, thank you. All right, come on, little Cleveland love. Then went on to Penn State to get my. Okay, all right, now a little bit more Pennsylvania love here. So did that. And then over educated and underemployed. Anybody ever been there? So I had really good quality education, absolutely no experience. And in order to get a job, I actually took the Penn State Master's degree off my resume because nobody wants to, oh, look at, we can't hire this guy. So I started temping. Had no idea what I wanted to do, had no idea what success meant. So I really was trying to find my way. Then read this book. This was the first book of many that started to change my life. And I want to read this because it's super important. Opportunity has spread its wares. Before you step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put the plan into action, and follow through with persistence. Now why do I pull out this quote from an amazing book is because as I just went, as I'm putting together this presentation, I get the original book back and I look at it and I underlined one thing from that book and there it is. This really made an impact on me from a time when I'm searching for myself, I'm trying to find my way. Then I ran into this book number two. The number two habit from this book is begin with the end in mind means to begin each day task project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination. Flex your proactive muscles, make it happen. And I'm like, wow, this is just, I'm not doing any of that. I haven't set any goals. I don't even know what success means. What do I need to do? So this is me. So fast forward a few years later, I ended up getting a job at Penton Media, then headquartered at Cleveland, Ohio. If you'll notice, I actually have hair here. I long for those days actually. But I actually am not wearing orange. This is one of the few pictures you'll see me where I'm not wearing some kind of orange, but still really struggling to find my way. Had no idea what success was. So I'm sort of just fumbling along, finding my way through. Then I started to do a lot of research on the actual writing down goal, writing down of goals and how important that was. So I said, well, first of all, I've got to find some goals. So I started to really think about what success meant. And then I said, I really need to write down these goals. And there's, there's actually a great study if you get a chance by Dominican University, talking about how much more successful people are that actually write down their goals. So there's my book. So I got my orange notebook and I started to actually write down my goals. I'm feeling pretty good because I'm thinking, okay, this is what success means to me in different ways. Whether it's Spiritual or whether it's mental or physical. And I'm like, okay, here's my goals. I'm feeling good. I'm on a path. One of those goals that I had written down was that I would not work for somebody or an organization that I didn't have some influence on the direction of the company. I was working at Pet Media at the time. Pet Media got bought out or merged with a company called Primedia. And I was reporting to the CEO at the time. And then when the merger happened, there like four or five layers came in between. And I lost that role. And because I had that goal that I needed to get out of that situation because I didn't have influence, I set the goal. Hey, I've got to get out of this. And I set the date March 31st of 2007 that I would leave. That's actually the date that I left Penton and started a business. I started this amazing idea called jump to 42. I don't know if anybody remembers it at all, but one person. Thank you very much. You were our sole customer. It made all the difference in the world. Jump to 42. We were the eharmony for content marketing. So I know. Let that sit with you a little bit. So basically what happened when brands needed to come in, came to our site and they wanted to do a content marketing project. Content project of some kind. They go to our site, they'd fill out a little profile, and then we would match them up with three to five vendors. Seemed brilliant at the time. Financial model wasn't so good. Anyways, that's what we started. And it was. The financial model was really tough. We actually had about a thousand projects come through. So we were getting the traffic, but the financial model wasn't there. So here's the core date. So here's my key pivot date. 93 9. I go and talk to one of our key customers that didn't re up for the subscription agencies had to subscribe to it. It was about 4 to $5,000 a year that they had to subscribe. And this person didn't re up. This is my best customer case study ever. Because we had just delivered a multimillion dollar project to that customer. I'm like, well, they must have just forgot to re up. It must be some oversight. I call her up on the phone and I said, I'm not going to say her name. What's the problem? You haven't re upped. Is there an issue? I mean, I think we've delivered pretty good ROI and She said, actually, we're going to use that money elsewhere. We think we can get ROI someplace else. That's better. And I said, I just delivered you a $2 million project. Tell me what it is, because I'll do it. Like, what else are you going to do? Had the conversation, got off the phone, and I'm like, oh, my God, my world's coming to an end. We're bleeding cash. With the business sinking a lot into technology, I'm thinking, everything's over with. I go into the backyard, and I had one of those moments where I'm going to have to go back and work for somebody else. I can't do that. I'm already broken. I don't think I can do it. Had a couple hours there where I really felt sorry for myself. I'm like, it was a horrible moment, but then in hindsight, the best moment. So I'm living in this failure. I actually am looking in the mirror thinking, oh, there's failure. What does failure look like? There it is, right there in the mirror. Had a chance to regroup. So here's where the good part comes in. I read this book called the Ten Times Rule, Grant Cardone. What I realized in reading this book is I wrote down my goals, but I never referred to them. I didn't organize them. From that moment on, I said, look, I've got to pivot into this direction and really use this in order to succeed and do the things I think I need to do as a human being. Took my goals and put them into these. Financial, family, spiritual, mental, physical, philanthropic. And I wrote down those goals, and I started to review those goals every day. Wrote down the goals every day. When I wake up and you're asking, what's Joe doing this morning? I'm looking at those goals in those categories and reviewing. And I, honest to God, it has changed my life. It is the most important thing from a business standpoint and then as well as the spiritual, philanthropic standpoint that I've done, because it gets me settled every morning on what I need to do. And I know every. At every moment during the day when I'm not moving toward those goals, because I just reviewed them. So these are the two things that I want you to do. These are those. And they're very, very, very simple things. And it's from that pivot point. That's why, you know, Content Marketing Institute exists, because I've been doing that every day. And I get to do things like wear this awesome orange suit, which is totally amazing. And I love doing It. And then last week, I had the opportunity to share the stage with Mr. Kevin Spacey. So I'm living. This is a dream come true. I'm doing things I've never done before because of two teeny little things that most people don't do. And I'm going to give you a business thing here because I think it's important to parlay this. We're all here for personal and business reasons. So anybody see Ann Hanley's speech yesterday? Ann, fantastic. Great friend. We've been working on our research for the last five years at Marketing profs. And this is what blew me away. So I'm working on this presentation and then we get these results in. The results are the same thing that I just talked about. When you look at the critical difference here, it is the critical difference between those that are successful at their content marketing, those that are effective, and those that are really struggling. There's just two things. They document their strategies, they write them down, and then they review them consistently. Those are the two things that I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's just like me. Companies are having the same issue. So that's when I go to. You know, we just, we just saw the Gladwell. Where's the Gladwell? Oh, there it goes. When you talk about Malcolm Gladwell, which just spoke yesterday, he talks about those two little things. So important are those two little things, and we don't do them. How many, Let me ask you, how many of you write your goals down? Okay, about 20%. How many of you review them every day? You and me, man. You and me together. Oh, we got another one here. Okay, we're going to have coffee later. So I want you to do these two things. So if I have anything for you to do, I really want you to take this. Because they're so easy. They're so easy to do if you actually do that, but most people don't do it. So I want you to categorize them into those categories that are important to you. And I want you to get up every day and just try it for a week or two. I guarantee you it will change the way you act toward people and it will change the way that you do business. And you'll actually start to look at your life and say, maybe I am in the right place, or maybe I'm not in the right place. Maybe I need to do something different to really make an impact on my life and the world. Thank you very much for your time.