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

Key Takeaways

[Music] [Applause] [Music] morning 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 than that one that was absolutely fantastic I 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 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 what are the best storytellers and speakers doing like like how did how did Steve Jobs go about telling stories and when he when he spoke uh of course Richard Branson is a favorite of mine Martin Luther King Jr my 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 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 oh you can do you a you can do right you could do that so I'm going to get personal on you I know 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 uh 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 uh 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 little little Cleveland love then went on to Penn State uh to get my okay all right now a little bit more Pennsylvania love here so did that and then overeducated and underemployed anybody ever been there um so I so I had really good quality education absolutely uh no experience and in order to get a job I actually took the Penn State master's degree off my resume cuz nobody wants to look at we can't hire this guy so I started temping uh had no idea what I wanted to do had no idea what success meant so 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 to 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 and 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 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 and then headquartered in Cleveland Ohio if you'll notice uh I actually have hair here I long for those days actually um 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 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 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 pent media at the time Penton 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 cuz I didn't have influence I set the goal say 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 J to 42 I don't 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 J to 42 we were the e-harmony 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'd 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 we actually uh 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 my key pivot date 939 I go and talk to uh one of our key customers that didn't reup for the subscription agencies had to subscribe to it it was about $45,000 a year that they had to subscribe and this person didn't reup well this is my best customer case study ever because we had just delivered a multi-million dollar project to that customer I'm like well they must have just forgot to reup it must be some oversight I call her up on the phone and I said um I'm not going to say her name what what's the problem you haven't re uped is there an issue I mean I'm I'm you know I think we've delivered pretty good Roi and she said um 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 $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 what it was it was a horrible moment but then in hindsight the best moment so I'm I'm living in this failure I actually am looking in the mirror thinking oh there's failure what's what's 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 10 times real Grant Cardone what I realize 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 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 categories 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 a spiritual philanthropic standpoint that I've done cuz 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 is are 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 spacy so I'm living this 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 I think it's important to Parlay this we're all here for personal and business reasons so anybody see an hanley's speech yesterday you know an fantastic great friend we've been working on our research for The Last 5 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 so the the results are the same 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 two there's just two things they document their strategies they write them down and then they review them consistently those are the two things and 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 the Gladwell where the Gladwell oh there it goes the when I when you talk about Malcolm gladell we just spoke yesterday and 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 I'm 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 cuz they're so easy they're so 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 imp impact on my life and the world thank you very much for your [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] time