Joe Pulizzi: What the Godfather of Content Marketing Learned While Writing a Thriller

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Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a Happy Holiday! They call him the godfather of content marketing. And while Joe Polizzi is the entrepreneur who founded the Content Marketing Institute, one of the marketing industry's most well-read and well-respected media publications in history, he has now taken his entrepreneurial journey in a whole new direction, writing his very first fiction novel, The Will to Die.

And today, on the podcast, we don't just dissect some of the best practices of marketing and content and all that good stuff that Joe knows inside and out and that you're absolutely going to love. But we dive into some of the mindset that it takes to transition from one entrepreneurial endeavor to another, especially one that goes from more of a kind of real-world marketing tactics to a more creative, fictional world of writing a thriller novel. Today, we have Joe Polizzi on the podcast, and it is just absolutely my honor to share him with you. Let's do this. I'm good.

I'm good. I got my little work here. So, you know, I know you got the new book out, and I obviously want to ask you a lot of questions about that and go through that. But, like, is there anything else that you want to talk through? I mean, I have a bunch of...

I want to talk through what you, like, whatever you, because you're, I mean, you're doing some great stuff. I mean, from what I've been catching. Well, I don't know about that, but... Prolific, well, you're creating a lot of content, especially on Instagram. That's where I've been seeing you, on Instagram.

Yeah, you know, I'm trying to find my place. You know, I took a job as the CEO of a fitness company, so I stepped out of marketing for a while, and it was in my hometown, and it was kind of one of those things that comes to you, and you're like... Is this going to be a really bad decision, or is this, like, fate putting something in front of you that you have to say yes to? So, I said yes and took it on, and it ended up being that thing that I shouldn't have done, which is okay. So, I took the job in January, left, you know, my, I was a chief marketing officer for a technology company, and obviously was doing a lot of other stuff just in the space.

And, and that was January, and I ran that company until September, at which point the founder came back in and said, I want to be the CEO now. Thank you for your time, have a nice day. And, so, it was like, oh, okay. So, I learned some valuable lessons there, which is all good, all good in the hood. But, yeah, so, basically coming back into the space, and finally doing what I probably should have done a decade ago, starting the kind of marketing company that I wanted to start all those years ago and never did.

I've just been creating like crazy, man, I mean, you know this, like sometimes the floodgates open, and it's like, there's no way to repress it. So, I've been doing social media, an article, a video a week, a couple podcasts a week, I've just been nuts. Do you have a newsletter? So, I actually just, I just, I'm reworking it. So, how I had said it set up was kind of like Seth Godin's, where just when I published something on the website, it went right out to them.

And, so, I've just been watching my stats, and basically what ended up happening was people were finding me in other places, didn't want me to fill up their inbox, and I was getting about 15 unsubscribes every time I would publish a new piece of content. And, literally, people would be writing me notes, like, I'm unsubscribing to this because I follow everything on LinkedIn, or I'm unsubscribing to this because I follow everything on Twitter. So, I sent out an email last week, and I said, this is our current setup. Based on just what I'm seeing in terms of your, you know, how people are operating with this, it doesn't feel like this is the best way of delivering, you know, of using email as a way to communicate with you. And, the feedback I got was that's 100% true.

So, everyone basically said, we'd rather, like, a roundup email once a week with maybe some insights or some exclusive stuff or whatever. Like, that's what we're looking for out of this medium. So, I'm changing that up. Well, yeah, I mean, it's weird because with everything I'm doing here, I'm starting, you know, I sold the 200,000 emails a week, which is fine. I'm not complaining.

But, I'm starting over now with this whole thing and building an audience around the book. And, so, I started the e-newsletter, and now it's, now that I'm putting out content in all these different channels, but I have the one hook, which is get them to sign up for the e-newsletter. And, that's starting to work. We're doing, I'm doing about 47, 48% open rate consistently. Nice.

It's working really well, but it's different. Like, it is a different experience. You won't get it anywhere else. You just, it's just like Anne Hanley. I'm basically copying Anne's model.

Yeah, which, if you're going to copy anyone, right? You know, she, I mean, I wanted, I asked her, I said, how did you get, you know, I'm where she was four years ago with her starting hers. Yeah. And, now she's, you know, got 20,000 and working really well and can monetize and do whatever she wants to do with it. Yeah.

So, yeah, so that's, it's worked, it's worked for me. I'm, now I'm getting, you know, I'm getting five or six or seven subscribers a day. You know, hopefully, it'll start really kicking into gear sometime soon. Can I, can I ask you about, like, your hook for the newsletter? Like, are you letting them know, like, there's exclusive stuff here?

Is there a downloadable? Is there, you know, are you, like, what is the... If you go, yeah, I mean, you can look at, I'm totally an open book. So, you go to JoePolizzi.com, all my calls to action are around the random newsletter. And you get, you get my, you know, three success tips to life and marketing.

And that's right there. It's a 22-minute audio thing that I put together, really easy to do. And then if you sign up for the book stuff as well, you get a free book chapter. So, that's how I'm doing that. Yeah, that's cool.

And, yeah, and then everything is that. And I tell them exactly you're going to receive it every other Thursday. And here's what it talks about, you know, writing, marketing, and money is what I talk about. And kind of random stuff that I think is interesting. Yeah.

And so far, I'm surprised. So far, it's, I get more people with nice feedback on that than almost anything I've done, which is nice. I just, right now, I, so I've built the base of it. And now I've just got to put the marketing juices on and see where it goes. So, that's really interesting.

One of the things that I've struggled with is what, you know, what I can get paid for and what I'm most interested in are two completely different things. Right? Like, have the family, got to pay the bills, got to make the money. And that comes from marketing, consulting, speaking, workshops. Like, that's how I get paid.

The things that I'm the most interested in and the things that I like writing, researching, like diving into, not that I'm not interested in marketing. I am, right? But it's like. It's not your passion. Well, it's, you know.

So, what do you most like writing about and researching about? I love diving into human behavior and how do we get the most out of ourselves. Not so much like habit hacks, like James Clear and stuff. Like, that stuff's cool. And I definitely am into it.

But I'm, like, so far down, like, Ryan Holiday's stoic trail, mashing that up against, like, Jordan Peterson and being an individual with, like, just, you know, how do we have our own thoughts? Like, there's so much stuff smashed against our face every single day. Like, how do we actually operate as our own unique people? Because, you know, 100 years ago, even though, yeah, there were plenty of distractions and people wrote about all the distractions of that day, there was still so much less, so significantly much less about what the world threw at you, that you were able to at least operate in your own head for small bits. And when I talk to people, oftentimes, you know, this is the question.

Like, I have a book that I'm starting to work on. And really, the initial question was, like, why do we hesitate? Like, why do people hesitate to do anything? Because I've been pounding insurance agents over the head for a decade to do very simple things, right? Like, I've been teaching They Ask, You Answer before Marcus wrote that stupid book, which I love, by the way.

Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, I always bust his chops because I'm like, there's a decent chance that I taught you They Ask, You Answer. You're just so freaking smart that you're the one that wrote the book. No, no. Probably true.

No, that's actually how we found each other. We were doing similar things. And I was like, oh, my God, look at this pool guy doing that. Like, we must be on to something. But, you know, and I would talk to these agents, and I'd say, man, I've been teaching you guys this for a decade.

Like, and nobody's doing it. Like, still no one's doing it. And then starting to hear their responses. Then that put me down this trail. I started researching stuff.

And long story short, I'm like, marketing tactics are great, and I love them. And I could talk tactics all day long. But none of that, not knowing the tactics, is not the reason that people are not successful marketing. Like, that's, the tactics are not, are never the issue. They're a symptom of what the issue is.

That's my, I don't know. Okay. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Yes, it makes perfect sense. Here's my take.

So, I just, so if I'm you, I would mash those two together. I'm not going to call it the stoic marketer. Yeah, yeah. But there's not a lot of people out there. So, you know marketing, right?

And then you're really interested in this other side. So, why don't you just take all that that you're really passionate about and just position it to the marketing professional? There's not a lot out there. You could be the guy that talks about that. And then that way it fulfills your creative side that you really want to focus on.

And then all you're doing is you're just saying, you're just not putting it out to everyone. You're just saying, I'm going to put it out to these people that I already know really well. And that can still drive your marketing consultancy business and how you get paid. And if you do it well, which you will, then that becomes your, that's your speaking. Yeah.

And you can still drive consulting revenue by speaking about this is how marketers need to think, act, behave in this society that we're in. See, that's why I do this podcast. Free consulting from people who are smarter than me. I'm serious. I mean, I wasn't like, while you were talking, I was getting chills.

I'm like, oh my God, that's his tilt. Yeah. That's what Ryan needs to focus on. I agree with you. I would say, I feel like I've executed it very poorly thus far.

Um, I like it, like you, you're, I know you're right. Um, right now it has felt very this side or that side, right? Like I wrote this article the other day. And again, this is, we're just chatting. We probably should have just hit record.

I already did. I already did. Okay, good. Then you can just, you can just do the whole thing. This is really just a solo podcast.

That's it. It's just an audience of what? Oh man. The, uh, you know, I just, it's just funny, these things though. And to hear you say like you're restarting again, it like brings up a lot of memories.

Cause I very much felt that way. Like at my previous, before the iteration in between, when I, when I had the CEO job, I went from like, I had built an audience of like almost 20,000 people, just an email. We were doing, we're doing close to 50,000 unique visitors to our website a month, just insurance content, just insurance people. So like we had built this audience where, dude, I was doing marketing videos specifically designed for insurance agents and getting 3,000, 4,000 views on an individual video. Then you, then I go, so then I go from that to net to like, you know, three months ago.

And I post my first video kind of post this little break and it gets like 200 views. And I'm just like, start well, you got to start over. I know it was just funny hearing you say that, but when, when Robert and I restarted this old marketing, the first episode, so we're on our, I don't know, 12th or 13th back since we took. So we did 200 and now we're back to this and the first one, because we were back and everything, it did great. And I'm like, Oh my God, you can take a year and a half off and it's all fine.

And then it dropped. And I'm like, Oh geez, I'm going to have to actually work at this. This is, I've got to work to get the audience back. So I was really, I wasn't devastated, but I'm like, Oh my God, this is, we, they went somewhere else. Yeah.

You know, and, and the other things that I found, so I'm just, and again, I'm interested in your takes on this. Cause it just feels like in, in, in certain regards, we're in similar spots. Um, like, so my very first podcast was content warfare. I built that up that I was looking at numbers. I was doing that podcast, like in 2011, 2012, creating a podcast, we're just distributing a podcast in 2019 going into 2020, it is uncomparable to what it was like distributing a podcast back in 2011, 2012, 2013.

Like it's, it's not even close to the amount of competition and high quality, like really high quality competition in the marketplace is, is crazy. I mean, and it's awesome. I mean, I listened to a lot of those podcasts, but there was a time when content warfare was one of like 30 marketing podcasts, now there's 300,000, I still have it on my iTunes list. Oh, you know what I got, I, here's what I need to do too. Again, we're going to talk about your stuff eventually.

I promise. Um, is I want to, I'm going to put out, I've actually been thinking, I need to start putting out a couple unique episodes to that. Cause that still gets about a hundred downloads a day. Um, and I need to put some stuff out to that list and say, Hey guys, like this is moving over here, I'm never going to take it down. Cause people, no, no, no, no, no.

Here's my idea. Don't move it. Just keep that because you keep all the subscribers that way. Now, if you change the name and you change the image, that's fine. But the great thing is if you, if you have a new episode coming out, it goes right to the top.

Yeah. I'm already subscribed. Don't tell, don't have people move when they don't have to just say, Hey, this is whatever you get all the subscribers. Don't, don't, and don't relaunch. My friends, this is why, uh, Joe has often been described as the godfather of content marketing because, cause these are the stupid mistakes that I would have made if we weren't talking today.

So, all right, man. Like I want to talk a little bit about, there's so many things about your, your journey that I'm interested in. So you founded content marketing Institute. And for so long, you literally sat at the beating heart epicenter of all things, content marketing, that the digital marketing revolution, whatever we want to call it evolution, like, like all things pass through, you know, your ecosystem. And I mean that in a very positive way.

Like you, you knew, you knew the players, you helped them, you put a lot of people on stages that got them, um, that got their message in front of, uh, a lot of people who really needed to hear them. Um, and I've always very much respected you for, for how hard I feel like you've worked to launch many of the really thoughtful people in our industry. Um, and, and that's just incredible work. Uh, you, you then, um, uh, sold that company and now you've transitioned into this next phase. And I'm really interested in, um, not so much your decision to, to, to sell because I, I completely under understand that part.

And I think anyone in business would, I'm interested in just like more. That next day, like when you wake up that next day, and now that part of your life, which was a decade of probably what you thought about every morning when you woke up, um, you know, now that is someone else's and not that it's not part of who you are, it will be forever, but now it's the next phase. Like, what is that day like for you? What are you thinking about? Like, what was that like?

Well, first of all, thank you. First of all, the next day came a year and a half later. Okay. So you got to remember, you know, it's, we sold in June of 2016 and my wife and I own the business. We were really, really ecstatic about the whole thing.

UBM, great company. We knew we did our research. We knew they were going to take care of content marketing world. They're going to take care of the brand. They were going to take care of the employees.

All that was great. But then you have something that's yours. And then I still worked there for a year and a half and I'm not giving the orders anymore. From that standpoint, being an entrepreneur, as you know, you know, you get a little itchy. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so it wasn't until January 1st of 2018 that I was like, wow, we did it. Yep. We, that's when we really had the celebration. I don't know.

It probably sounds weird to say that because we had already sold. Uh, we were already compensated for the majority of that. So all that was great. Then, so basically, so just going back a little bit, go to November of 2017. I, I wrote, I penned my blog post to the content marketing community on the CMI site.

It was called the lovely letter to the community. And I typed why I was leaving and I was going on to something else. And I didn't really say what that something else was. And then everybody's like, Joe, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

It was weird, right? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what the next phase is going to be. I had to be honest. And that's where I got this whole sabbatical idea.

And I talked up with my wife and I read a lot on taking a sabbatical. And I said, nobody gets an opportunity to do something like this. Let's just do, let's go big here. I'm going to take a year off of doing no work and nothing that I don't want to do. And I'm not taking any speaking gigs and all that kind of stuff.

And so January 1st, I did that. I started telling people I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to take the year off and be with the kids, be with the family, be around, be present. And then the first 30 days of that, I took the electronics-free sabbatical. So no social media, no email, went completely offline except for messaging with my kids and stuff like that.

And then the other 11 months, that's when I started to get into the creative side of, you know, I want to challenge myself a little bit and do something different. And, you know, sort of started writing, writing the will to, what became the will to die. So yeah, it was a weird, weird journey. But I'm not, it's like, I was always, I mean, I always loved marketing and I still do love and I'm interested in marketing. But more I was interested in being an entrepreneur and the marketing angle, and maybe you understand this, the marketing angle is just how you get there.

That's how we made the money and built the brand. But I love the people. I mean, the people in the content marketing community are the best ever. I mean, you talked about some, you know, seeing some of these people grow up and become superstars in the marketing area. I mean, they were, I mean, but they haven't changed.

These people are still salt of the earth. You email them, you call them, they'll still do anything for you. I'm just happy that they still allow me to stick around. Yeah. Well, you know, that part does not surprise me.

But I will reiterate what you said. The people in particular, the community that I think gravitated around content marketing world and stuff, I think to do that work, you have to have a level of empathy to really, to work with clients who are oftentimes struggling to tell a story, to understand how their business, you know, intertwines with their clients, how you pull the most value out and deliver it back. Like, it's really, it would be really tough to be an a-hole and then do that work. It just would be. And, and it, I would agree with you.

It's, it's a tremendous community. And, and I'm to a certain extent an outsider, but, but I love to, I love to see them. And, and I'm lucky enough. I know you're in there too, that the speak and spoke community, you know, a lot of them are in that community. And it's, it's phenomenal to be, to be part of that.

Well, it's, well, the one reason why, to follow up on what you're saying is that if you're in the content marketing industry and you're doing consulting or you are a marketing professional trying to create content, you have to be empathetic. You have to understand the audience's pain points in order to develop the kind of content that's going to make an impact on their lives. That's it. Now, nothing against the ad folks in the world. I know a lot of really good ones, but just, you know, do the whole, go to the whole mad men side of the house.

Go to the whole, we're going to create this big campaign, this big interruptive thing. It is way different thinking. So you really do need nice people. Yeah. The content marketing side.

Yeah. Or because, because they understand humanity. I, I mean, I don't want to get too deep on it, but it's true. You really do have to, the first thing that you and I do when we go into consulting and we're looking at this, it's okay. Well, who, who it not, I don't want to know necessarily what you're selling here.

I need to know who the audience is and what they're challenged with, because that's where you start. And then you can figure out down the road, what you're going to end up selling. But that, that's the issue that most people struggle with in marketing. Marketing has completely changed from that standpoint. You don't start with your product anymore.

I don't, I don't do it. Some people still do it that way. I don't do it that way. I want to start with the audience first. It's all about them.

And then how do we sort of get our message across from a persuasive standpoint once we build a relationship with them? Do you think that, going to your kind of advertising mad men comment, do you think that content marketing and some of the principles of content marketing have started to leak into the advertising world? To me, I've seen at least in the last year or so, um, it sounded to me like, like, like content versus advertising, eating content marketing, even though I think advertising budgets are often higher, that the principles of content marketing have actually started to eat advertising. Um, you know, if that's happening at all, does that, do you see any? Oh yeah, I, you know, somebody asked me years ago, would content marketing just become marketing?

And I, this is back in 2008, 2009. I said, yes, I think that, I think that it's just the right way to communicate with people. I mean, marketing aside, this is how you should communicate with other human beings. You should be thoughtful. You should care about what they care about.

You should try to provide value outside the products and services you sell, just very simple. Okay. Now go to today, look at Procter and Gamble, right? Procter and Gamble has turned that advertising machine on its head. And what are they now doing in their 30 second spots?

They're doing tutorials. And it's around this brand called homemade simple. Well, people don't realize that's a content marketing brand that they started back in 2008 or something like that. And they started it with a blog and an e-newsletter and now they've created it and then integrated it into their ad program. And now they have a product line called homemade simple.

And they've got a whole research facility around. I'm like, brilliant. This is the way that it should be. Is Procter and Gamble alone in this? No.

I mean, that's, that's what we'll see. I mean, we've sort of seen Red Bull go into that area. We've sort of seen, you know, air electronics go into that area, but we'll, we'll start to see more of that happening as we go. How is it going to work if you don't do that? I'm just going to throw the 30 second spot.

It's still alive. It's not going to die anytime soon, but it's a lot harder than it used to be. Yeah. I'll be honest. You're just watching my, so my son turned six today and congratulations.

Happy birthday. Thanks. I'm, I, it does feel like an achievement that I've kept him alive this long, to be honest with you. It is for all of us fathers. Right, right.

It's so much, it's way more his mom than it is me. It's, it's almost, uh, uh, uh, in despite of me than it is because of me. There's no doubt. But, um, I look at the way he consumes, right? The way that he consumes content in any form.

He, he doesn't, he doesn't care, nor does he even try to learn how to use the regular TV remote. What he wants, he goes, it's Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube. He knows how to navigate them via, basically via the talk button into the TV. So he presses a button, TV turns on, play. He, right now he's super into Michael Jackson.

Play Michael Jackson, beat it. Dun, dun, dun, dun. You know, and he starts dancing around the room. Or, uh, the one thing that he wanted for his birthday was Alexa. So we got him the kids account on Amazon Alexa.

So hopefully he's not looking at or listening to crazy stuff, but, and he can't order any toys or anything, but, but he just, he'd be sitting there because Amazon play some song from frozen Amazon, you know, tell me how long until my birthday, you know, he said, or, you know what I mean? He said that yesterday, um, because we, we let him open a present early, his birthday being the next day, you know? So it's like, it's just, it, he is the way that he consumes is completely content driven. It's, it's to, to try to shove an ad in the way that he views the things that the content that he's consuming is it would be impossible. I mean, he literally an ad came on one 32nd spot on during a bills game the other day, we're watching the bills game and there was like a quick injury and they played one 32nd spot.

And he looks at me, he goes, dad, these commercials. Oh my God. They're so long. It was one 32nd spot on this injury time. It was crazy.

They got no patience for it. You know, what's great about what you're saying is I've been seeing it and I think that, well, I don't know when it's going to be, but it's happening right now. This whole thing about voice. Yeah. This is huge.

I mean, they're going to look back in 10, 15 years and say, what were we doing? Using our fingers to search on things. This is crazy. Yeah. Everything's going to go voice and at least from a business.

And I think you have to start thinking about that because who's not going to use this? I mean, I, I get frustrated just if I'm on, you know, I've got a Roku, so I'm fiddling around on, let's say Amazon prime or Netflix, and I'm going up and, or I want to search for something and I don't have my voice set up for it yet. It is frustrating. Yeah. I've got to do the you and then scroll over to the, you know, whatever I'm searching for.

Oh, geez. I almost think they make that system difficult so that you'll use the voice. I think the computer's like, I don't want you typing things in here. Just tell me what you want me to do. You know what I mean?

That's that, but all right. Well, we've, we've spent the first 30 minutes here talking about a bunch of different things, which are interesting, but really what I want to, I want to get into this novel that you wrote because, uh, and, and there's a bunch of parts of it. So, um, you are absolutely entrepreneur. You phase out of one entrepreneurial journey and you're into the, this next chapter, probably not the last by any regards, but certainly the next. And the thing you decide to do is write a fiction novel, a thriller, uh, the will to die.

And, um, it is like that sexy project that probably every creative wants to do write a fiction novel, but never actually ends up doing. So, uh, talk to me about one, the decision, like, is this something you've always wanted to do to talk to me about the process and maybe the business of, of, of, of a novel book? Like, I'm just, I'm so interested in it. I, I want to know about the gut wrenching process creating a fiction novel. Uh, so first of all, so as you know, I've written five written or co-written five nonfiction marketing business books, coupled it fairly well, uh, whatever.

Some of the best in the business. And well, thank you. But, um, my wife never read any of them. She, she read the acknowledgements page of all of them because she wanted to see what I said about her, but that that's it. And I, I almost took it as a challenge.

I really wanted her to read something that I wrote and I'm like, well, what does she like to read? She likes to read thrillers, the mystery novels. That's her, that's her jam. So I'm like, well, if I'm going to get her to read something that I put together and create, I'm going to have to create something for her. Yeah.

So that was my thinking. So in January of 18, you know, when I went on this sabbatical, that's the, that's when I started writing this thing and getting it together. And I, and so that's the primary reason I really wanted to do something for her. And as sappy as it sounds, I wanted to give her a gift. Hopefully she would like it.

And then I also wanted to challenge myself creatively for sure, because, and I don't want to make it sound, I mean, I've written probably 5,000 blog posts on content marketing. I mean, I've written a lot of stuff on it. It comes very naturally. If you said, Joe, write a content marketing article, uh, and it needs to be 1500 words. I could get that, I'll have that thing done by the time we're done talking and just do a nice edit of it.

I've written a lot on it. It's, it's, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's a lot easier than actually creating a world, which is what I did in, in the will to die. So the process of it, I started in January and I had an idea of a marketing agency guy whose father passes away and ends up taking over a funeral home. Well, I know both those worlds. I come from the marketing side, been in it for over 20 years now.

And then I grew up in a funeral home, uh, not in a, didn't live there in a funeral home, but my grandfather and my uncle owned a funeral home. So I was around it growing up all the time. And I'm like, okay, I've got the premise for a story. I know sort of what's going to happen. And I started typing it, typing it up.

And then I just stopped. I just, there was no creative juices. I'm like, what am I going to do with this? And I talked to a lot of really smart friends of mine who are writers who had written fiction like this. And the consensus seemed to be, at least from the people I was talking to, like, well, put together the outline, you know, put together your, your chapters and get them all set up and then knock out the chapters as you go.

And then you put it together. And then that's your first manuscript. I'm like, well, you made it sound really easy. I, I drew a blank. I had absolutely nothing.

And it was really, and I would sit in front of the computer and just nothing would happen. I couldn't, I couldn't bring the story together from an outline standpoint. And so fast forward, like 10 months, not kidding you. Oh, so nine, 10 months of writer's block, nothing. And so then, and I, and I apologize because I can't remember who the guest was, but I was listening to, I was running and listening to a James Altucher podcast.

I don't know if you listen to James. Oh, I do. Got some really good guests on there. I really look for the guests and I can't remember which writer was on there, but he was, he was talking about how to get over writer's block. So I'm really, I'm running.

I'm really interested. And he said, look, don't, don't overcomplicate it. Just sit in front of whatever, however you write, whether you're with the written word, paper and pen or on a computer processor. And just start writing about anything. Just start writing.

And he says, what do writers do? Writers write. So every day you need to write. So set a goal, 250 words, 500 words, a thousand words to, to write. And I'm like, oh, that seems really easy.

I'm going to do that. So first couple of days, I just started writing gibberish basically. Yeah. For the first couple, just to get to my 500 words. And then I started to get into the rhythm of, of telling the story and it started to come together.

And so 500 words. I remember one day, I think I wrote 3,500 words. Like it just was, ah, and I'm going, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. And I came down. I remember I came down stairs.

My office was upstairs, came downstairs to talk to my wife. I was in, you know, typing for hours. And she's, I'm like, oh, I can't believe it. What the character did today. You'll never guess.

And she's like, you didn't know what the character was going to do. I said, I had no idea. It just, it just happened, which is when you get into the flow, those are the kinds of things that were happening. So restarted in October and finished the manuscript January 21st of 2019. So basically let's say three, four months from when I just got out of my own way.

And every day, at least 500 words started to write. And then I think the initial manuscript had almost 100,000 words and send it to some reviewers and send it to multiple editors, copywriter, another editor, another review, round of reviews. And I would say the final final was probably April, May that we got to before we got into figuring out who's going to read the audio book and things like that. And 85,000, 86,000 words, almost on the dot and eight hours and four minutes of narration time for the audio book. So that's.

Did you read it? No, I tried. I've read the other, I read all my other books. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, well, it's not.

And then it's very difficult because you got to sort of do the other voices and the other mannerisms. So we hired a great guy called Kyle Tate, named Kyle Tate. And Kyle did a fantastic job with these voice actors, done tons of thrillers. And so he took it through. Thank goodness.

Best money I've ever spent is not reading it myself. So I've heard that from other fiction authors that it's not, it's not like doing your own with your own, with your, um, with your nonfiction work, uh, the audience almost prefers for the author to read it. Cause then you can kind of inject some thoughts and stuff, but when it's nonfiction or when it's fiction, they're like, please author, don't read it. Like hire someone who knows what they're doing. Cause it's almost, it's like acting.

It seems like it is absolutely acting. And, uh, and so I would recommend, you know, if you're ever going to do that, but, but I agree. If you're doing a nonfiction book, try to read it yourself if you, if you at all possibly can. So in writing nonfiction versus nonfiction, I'm sure there's some like obvious things, but what's like one, maybe non-obvious difference between the two, maybe something that was easier or similar that didn't seem, is there anything that you just said, you know what, that's people wouldn't realize that this happens. Uh, well, the one thing that comes to mind right off the bat about the similarity is the importance of editing.

I mean, if you write, whether it's nonfiction or fiction right off the bat, 25% of that's got to come out. Cause we always tend to write more than we need to. And that's good. That's with business writing. That's with anything.

So most likely if you write anything, you're writing too much and you need to edit it, edit this thing. The, the, the differences, geez, it it's, it's, I can't tell you how different it is in creating a story and creating a world and keeping it straight. I mean, I had notes and I've got these like right here, I've got notes all over the place trying to keep track of the world. Who's in it? What's going on with nonfiction?

I mean, you're just telling the truth. Yeah. You're lying the entire time. So you have to keep track of all the lies and it's very difficult to do that. You know, and I, what was a horrible thing that we almost published it this way, but I caught it on the last run through and I, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't catch it earlier.

My dates were off. I had, cause it all happens in May of the, whatever the present year is. And I actually, the way that I did things and I said, May 13th or May 9th or whatever I went through and they were off in how the story was working in sunrise and sunset. And I'm like, I can't believe it. Somebody would have called me on that.

How did I get that wrong? So those things you really have to keep track of. So my advice is keep, like, keep track of characters. So write down, okay, well, this is Jack Miller and Jack Miller's this. And Jack Miller was born in Texas.

And Jack Miller, his kids are in, live in Dallas, you know, because as you go through, because you talked about that in the beginning, setting up the character. And then at the end, when they come back, you, you, you've got to, you'll, you'll either catch it on re-review hopefully, or you have it in front of you putting together kind of the buyer persona, if you will, of each of your characters. You know, that's actually why George R. R. Martin never got to book six of the Game of Thrones.

So, you know, not to bash on Game of Thrones, but the last two seasons were pretty horrible. I never watched one episode. Yeah. Well, just what, if you, my recommendation would be to read the books and then watch the shows because the first, the books that he wrote are ridiculous. I mean, they're so good.

I was reading them back and I used to get made fun of all the time in college because I was part of a fraternity and played baseball. And like from the outside, I was like a bro-y jock guy, but really at night, what I would do is go up to my room and read like fiction novels. I love them. I love, especially sci-fi, stuff like that. And it was like Hanley reads books with maps.

That's it. Like that was what I used to get made fun of all the time. It doesn't matter. So, so long story short is the reason that he, one of the reasons that he gave for never actually getting to book six and, and each book took like almost logarithmically longer to produce than the book before it was because the world, he had allowed the world to get so big and so expansive that he couldn't keep track of the characters to bring them back in. And he said at one point he had an army of almost like a thousand readers of Game of Thrones that he would have to call upon.

He would send out emails and go, I have no idea what color, you know, this character's eyes are who lives in this part of the country, you know, and it just became like every little detail, you know, to pull those back in. It was too big. It was too, the world had gotten too big for him. And it's, it's just really interesting to hear you say that because I always thought to myself, like if having never gone through the process, you wouldn't, you wouldn't think that. And then to hear this guy say that who you would believe in your mind, you're like, he's so dialed into this world.

Like you just know everything, but you know, you can't remember what someone's eye color was from chapter three of the first book when you're, you know, and so that, that makes a lot of sense. And plus when you're writing, you're in the, now I know you, you go, you know, Martin went through a lot of different revisions of those things, but, uh, you know, as you're writing, you're, you're in the zone, you don't necessarily know, you don't, you might've rewritten something, but you don't know all the details that you just wrote, if that makes any sense. I know it completely does. It almost is like you're, you're Micah Jordan at the free throw line. Like you're, you're in the zone.

You're just focused on that. You're telling the story, but somebody just asked me the other day, they asked me about the character, Brenda in more detail. And I was like, Brenda. I don't remember what, and then it took me a while to say, Oh, Denise's girlfriend, Brenda, and all this old, and I, I'm like, okay, I got it. It just took me a while to get there.

You know, it's funny. That stuff even happens in, um, in like nonfiction books too. You know, I, uh, I was listening to, uh, Robert Greene, who I'm a big fan of. I think a lot of people are a big fan of Robert Greene, but I'm reading, I'm like three quarters of the way through mastery. Cause it's essentially like a, it's like a college textbook, um, on being awesome.

Um, but, but it's a lot, you know, and he was telling a story on, he was on Joe Rogan's podcast and he was telling a story. And, um, and then, um, uh, Rogan followed up with a question and literally he had to be like, I don't remember. It sounds like something I wrote, but I don't remember exactly what you're talking about. And it's just, you know, I can see it. Like it's so dense and you're telling me stories.

And he just was like, I'm, I believe that I wrote that, but I have no ability to recall it for you. That's so, that's so funny. I was on a podcast like this, but it was a live thing. Yeah. So they're doing the whole thing live.

And this was when Epic Content Marketing came out in 2013. And there's a chapter on the six aspects of Epic Content Marketing. And the host said, Joe, we love Epic Content Marketing in chapter, whatever you talk about the six aspects of Epic Content Marketing. Can you quickly run through those? And I'm like, I don't, I don't know, but the six, I can name up four of them, all six.

Yes. I can't. How about you tell me what they were? I said, I can't really. So I didn't say, I can't remember.

I said, well, I don't want to go through all six right now, but here's, here's the three key ones that I would remember. So good. That's true, man. That is great. I love that.

I, um, someone called me out the other day because I, uh, I have like this story that I tell and, um, it's just like a, whatever, but it's a story that fits kind of what I'm trying to do a lot of times. So I tell the story a lot and they're like, you know, the last time you told that story, it was different than this time. And I was like, I was like, I gotta be honest. I literally said to them, um, I said, you know, at this point, if you told me that that story didn't even happen, I, I might believe you. Okay.

Here we're really going off the rails here, but this, but this is right to your point. Have you listened to any revisionist history by Malcolm Gladwell? Some of it. Yeah. There's a, there's a whole, uh, episode on Brian Williams and the whole thing that happened with Brian Williams about being in the helicopter and caught in a lie or what a lie.

It is fascinating because it talks about memory and how we, our memories absolutely change and how he believed that Brian Williams didn't lie, but as his memory changed, he actually started to believe that he, as he told that story over 10 years, he started, he believed that he was on that plane in that position. And it's, and then they just talk about what people say about memory and how we forget most things. And it, but it, I mean, think about that. I completely, we're telling, we're telling stories right now that we believe in our hearts is true, but really didn't happen that way because we've been telling them for 20 years. That's there is, I, I, I, uh, I would, I a hundred percent believe that.

I mean, especially, I'll tell you, this is especially true. Um, I think when you, when you create as much as say like you or I do, like you, you just, you get into the flow and sometimes you inject little bits into the narrative that for whatever reason make it sound more exciting for the audience. And, um, and, and again, you're not lying, nor are you trying to be dishonest in any way, but you're just in that moment. And you're like, and you come out and you're like, I'm hoping 80% of that was what actually happened. But you know, I guess if you're trying, if the point of the story is to help move someone or entertain them or whatever, then if a few little pieces are off, you know, should we hold people accountable?

I don't know. It would be, I would be, I would be definitely be hypocritical for me to hold anyone accountable to that. Cause I know that there are aspects of things that I, that have morphed. And today I couldn't even tell you what the truth was. Well, that's, that's the issue, isn't it?

Because I remember, I always tell the story of when we did the pivot for content marketing Institute, this was in September of 2009. If my memory serves me correctly. And we go, um, I got, I got a rejection call for a service that we were trying to sell. And basically that was it. It told me that the current model wasn't working.

We had to go to this new model. Well, when I tell that story in my head, it all happens very quickly. I get the no, I go into the backyard, I'm feeling sorry for myself very quickly. After that, I write down on a cocktail napkin, which I don't know where I got, but in my mind, I said, it's a cocktail napkin. So I think I was drinking, but I was at home.

So I don't know how that works unless I serve myself a cocktail napkin. And I wrote down the model for what became content marketing Institute. Like very, God, Oh my God, it's amazing. That's the story. I don't really know how that whole thing happened.

I know, I know that it happened. I don't know the time. I can't even get into that detail anymore. And that happened, you know, almost 11 years ago now. So I, I like that visual though.

Like you come down, you're very sober. You make yourself this really professional drink with the cocktail napkin in the backyard. You're contemplating life. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping, you know, you're in your Zen moment.

Like I, I like that the muse plops onto your shoulder and gives you this idea. Like there's a whole, there's a whole, I go through it. Oh, when I, you know, when I'm on stage and I'm leaning into it because I'm going, I'm, I'm in the backyard and I've got a wife and two small kids and I don't know how I'm going to take care of them anymore. And I'm feeling, I feel so emotional about it. And I don't know where to turn.

And I've made a horrible mistake by starting this business in the first place and go through the whole thing as we go. And then got the revelation of there's a better way. Just got that marketing institute. Woo. So, yeah.

Okay. So tell me a little bit about, and we just got a couple of minutes here, but I do have a couple more questions about, about the book. And my questions are, um, around like, so launching a fiction novel versus launching a nonfiction, um, book, uh, what are, what are some of the differences between like putting them out into the marketplace? We talked a little bit about the beginning about you're building a new email list, which is specific to, you know, kind of maybe tailored more towards a community of people who would be interested in that. Um, but what are the things are you doing that, that maybe you wouldn't have done, uh, with some of your previous work?

The, the, the launching of, if you just look at how most people launch a fiction and a nonfiction, it's very, very similar takes. If you're working with an agent and then working with a publisher, the process is long. So it's, you're at least 12 to 18 months out from accepting of that proposal until you see, and they almost, and then you'd launch everything at the same time. I launched the audio book, the ebook and the print book all at the same time. That's what I did with the last three of, uh, published, uh, nonfiction published with McGraw Hill.

That's the way we did. And I, when I did research on how people launch novels, it's pretty much the same. If you launch in with a traditional, uh, company, which we did not traditional publisher, like a Simon and Schuster or whatever takes that long time. They launch them all at the same time, big lead up three month marketing time up to that point. And then if you are a self published author, you're basically focusing on the Amazon ebook, and then you might launch a companion, um, audible version of it.

So everything's on Amazon there. Now, a couple of things with this whole thing. First of all, I had a pretty good marketing. I still probably do have a pretty good audience of marketers that follow me and especially on the social media channels, but I don't have anybody that follows me for what I, nobody even knows that I'm writing. This is a whole new thing.

So I'm figuring out how do I build an audience with this thing? So keep that there. I have no audience. I have just people that like my marketing stuff. Great.

That doesn't mean anything when I'm launching a fiction novel. But then as I'm doing research on how to launch a fiction novel, I honestly ran, I got frustrated because everyone does it exactly the same. Yeah. I'm like, you are in most of the time you were just beholding the Amazon, but you got to focus on Amazon, this Amazon, that, because if you don't bow before Amazon, nothing's going to work. And I'm just like, there's got to be another way.

And I'm actually, I was desperate to look for case studies of authors out there just trying different things. Not much out there. Everybody's pretty much doing it the same. So I said, okay. And if anybody knows how I go out and when I talk about content marketing, I talk about brands, businesses, launching whatever you're going to launch from a content marketing perspective, launching it on one platform and focusing on that one.

So if you're going to launch a podcast, you're all in on that podcast. You're not launching six other things at the same time. You're going to create one great thing. You market using other things, but you have one thing that draws them in instead of everything at the same time. But that's what everyone's doing in book publishing.

They're launching it. Oh, we're going to launch it on an audio. We're going to launch it in print and ebook all at the same time. Which I'm like, I, I think there might be a better way to do it. So I'm taking this.

I have no audience. And I think there, if you focus on one channel only and just focus all your energy on that, I think the results might be better than if you did it on every channel at the same time. So that's what I decided. I say we, my wife and I, but I decided to do this and say, okay, let's do one channel only. I'm going to launch in just audio and see how that goes.

And the second thing is I now have an audience. I need people to try this thing. So let's give it away for free. So that's what we decided to do. So the book launched on launches whenever people listen to this December 4th.

And for four months, I'm going to give it away completely for free on any podcast channel. So whatever you listen to podcasts with, whether it's Apple or Google or Stitcher or Overcast or whatever, it's going to be available. Spotify, it's going to be there. And I thought the best way to build that audience is just to give it away and see, and just focus on audio. Now I've had some people tell me, Joe, I only read books in print or I only read books.

I'm like, that's fine. Then this is not for you. I'm focusing on a very specific audience of trying to move my audience of marketers that already know me and taking those that listen to podcasts that like thrillers. No, so this is a very niche play from a marketing standpoint. So instead of just saying, I'm going after thriller lovers, I'm saying I'm going after this group of people, which I still think if I focus on that as my true fans, that I can make this thing successful and see it grow.

So that's the crazy way we're launching it. I don't have the results yet, but we'll see. I love it. Um, I read content warfare, my, my book that I launched in 2014. Um, I read that as podcast episodes, chapter by chapter, 23 chapters.

I launched it for free on, on the kinds of warfare podcast thing that we're talking about feed or whatever. Yeah. I, it, dude, it, that is, you are, I think you're on to something you'll know. I mean, you're, you'll know when it launches and I, but I will tell you that my gut and just, I think, I think you're really onto something because I'm assuming this won't be the only book you write, um, in the series and to show that amount of value upfront one, it's, it's what you've preached for a decade plus now. And two, so it's, it's very much by your, uh, morals, your value, your, your methodology.

So it fits. And two, um, it isn't, you know, the idea of a novelist giving their work away for free is so foreign outside of the ebook, 99 cent ebook. Oh, it's free for the next three hours thing that they do. Um, which I, I, to me has been done for so long now that it feels valueless. There's no, you're just pumping your numbers up, but no one's actually reading that book.

No one's actually falling in love with the characters in the world that you created. Um, you know, this is, this is going to sound, so I have, Oh, I'm, I'm incredibly envious to a certain extent, even though I know the torture that you went through to create this thing only because I, I have, um, I, I really would love to write fiction. I've read science fiction for 38 years now or whatever, whenever I started reading to however old I am now. And, um, I've always wanted to create this world. And I, I do, uh, when I'm on long drives, I have, I create the world.

I talk the world into my phone, um, which is really cool because you just capture ideas and scenes. I'll capture scenes, this character talking to this character. And, uh, this is a, I tend to ramble, but, um, my, uh, my son listens to my talk to text because he likes to play with it. And the other day, so my wife doesn't know that I do this. No one knows that I have this world that I have created and talk to text on my phone.

And he starts playing one and it's me like, you know, talking about where the characters are and how they're interacting. And he's like, what's this dad? I'm like, turn that off. That's awesome. I don't want anyone to know that that exists.

That's great. But, um, what I've always wanted to do, what I think would be a great idea for a newsletter, because it's something that as a, as a fan of certain worlds, I would have loved to have seen is, um, conversations that only exist in that newsletter. So you had mentioned Brenda and, uh, Jimmy Miller or Jim Miller or whatever the guy's name was. Like if there's a conversation that they could have about something pertinent to the book, that's actually not in the book and won't be in the next book, but actually pulls them in or explain something that happened. But it's the only way you see that conversation, which could literally be like three sentences, hopefully cryptic with a cliffhanger that, that doesn't give you the answer, but pulls you in, but like that type of original, but you know, vanishing content to a certain, I've always been like, man, there are pieces of books that authors could fill in around like what star Wars is doing with their, with their movies, but not full, full thing.

You're not, it's a, you're not far off because the thought is, so if you, let's say you're on Apple is that's how you listen to your podcast. You've got Apple podcasts. Hopefully you subscribe to the will to die and you get all 42, you get the trailer, all 42 chapters and you get the instructions and the bonus chapter, which I just put in because people were starting with the epilogue. So I need them to start with the prologue, but anyway, so I just did that. And so I'm working on Will Pollitt, Will Pollitt's the main character in the will to die.

Will Pollitt's book two right now. And if I continue to do this, the thought is to your point, every, you know, couple weeks, a month, I'll throw in like a little episode, little chapter leading to, you don't have to wait for this is it. It's coming here. I can lead them in and keep them going and keep them hooked. And then hopefully let's say this time next year, book two comes out and they're already subscribed.

Yeah. And we're moving them, but I don't know yet. I mean, this is all big, big experiment. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to work or not.

I love that idea, man. I feel like, I feel like the reason people are so Star Wars crazy right now and Avengers crazy and what they did really well, that can be done on a smaller scale for worlds like you're creating and the worlds that I appreciate that I would love for some of the authors that I read to do is, is these, just give me these little glimpses into what their life is really like, or like those scenes at the end of Avengers movies that you have to wait till the credits end and people like make fun of them. But I love them. Like at the end of the first, we're like, they're all sitting around eating McDonald's and like the blown up McDonald's. And you're like, you know what?

After you just had an epic battle with an army of aliens, you'd probably want to mow a Big Mac and a Coke and just like chill out with your leg on a table. Like, that's probably what you would do. That's exactly right. I just think those things are so interesting. Dude, I, um, I want to be respectful of your time and, uh, and we have chatted about a whole bunch of things.

I'm so incredibly happy for you. It's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's really, uh, I think the way the professionalism in which you handled yourself forever is, is, is very admirable and it's, uh, exciting to watch you transition into this next phase. I'm sure this won't be the only thing you do, but, um, the fact that you are tapping into a whole new vein of creativity, um, is something I think many people, uh, uh, would be envious of and, and would celebrate that, that you, uh, that you've actually gone through the work. I think everyone daydreams, but doesn't actually do it and you've done it. And I think that's amazing.

So, um, so for, uh, the will to die where, you know, uh, this will come out on the day that everything is launching. So we'll have that all timed out. But by the time, by the, exactly. By the time anyone watches this, go to the will to die.com. Okay.

And you can download it for free until March 3rd or Mark, uh, March 4th. Yeah. But anyways, the will to die.com. You can get it on whatever player that you want to. Gotcha.

So either go there directly, or if for some reason you can't remember this, go to my site. I'll have it linked up. You can go there too, but go to the will to die.com. Dude. Uh, as always, man, it is such a pleasure to spend time with you.

Absolutely. It's been fun. Thank you so much. And looking forward to your next thing that's building. This is going to be great.

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