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Content Inc., Second Edition: Start a Content-First Business, Build a Massive Audience and Become Radically Successful (With Little to No Money)

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Content Inc., Second Edition: Start a Content-First Business, Build a Massive Audience and Become Radically Successful (With Little to No Money)

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Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world: unreasonable people persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable people. ADAPTED FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

By focusing on building an audience first and defining products and services second, a person can change the rules of the game and significantly increase the odds of financial and personal success. Let me repeat that: I believe the absolute best way to start and grow a business today is not by launching or pushing products, but by creating a system to attract, build, and retain an audience. Once you’ve built a loyal audience, one that loves you and the information you send, you can most likely sell the audience anything you want. This model is called Content Inc.

Smaller organizations have no resources compared with those of their much larger competitors. That means they need to play an entirely different game.

This sweet spot is the intersection of a knowledge or skill set (something the entrepreneur or business has a competency in) and a specific audience desire.

Once the sweet spot is identified, the entrepreneur needs to determine the “tilt,” or the differentiation factor, to find an area of little to no competition.

Ann was successful because she focused on being great on one platform, not dabbling in many at once.

itself, web traffic is a meaningless metric. Our goal is to generate traffic to increase the opportunity to acquire an audience.

Today 2.4 million unique people visit SME monthly. We have 416,000 people that we email three times per week. We currently publish four articles, two podcasts and three videos per week.

It’s almost impossible to monetize and grow your audience without first getting readers to take action by actually opting in and subscribing to your content.

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”

If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today? STEVE JOBS

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ANNE FRANK

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor. BRIAN TRACY

“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.”

Before you start to think about what you want to accomplish, you need to spend some time thinking about who you are and who you want to be. •   Do you want to be an athlete? •   Do you want to be a successful business owner? •   Do you want to be a great husband/wife or father/mother? •   Do you want to give more than you receive?

Two daily behaviors have made all the difference for me: writing down my goals and consistently reviewing those goals.

Great content marketers do two things differently from the rest: •   They document their content marketing strategy in some way (written, electronic, etc.). •   They review and refer to the plan on a regular basis.

Can you imagine the chaos of building a house without a plan? But that’s what we do with our lives. We don’t plan for our desires to come true.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says: “If you are going to try to bat 1,000%, you won’t accomplish many things of importance. If you’re willing to strike out a few times, you can change the world.”

I Finished My Novel in 2019 by Writing One Hour Every Day.

On average, it took 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.

The most important thing in accomplishing your goals is to believe that it is possible. You don’t need more money, skills, abilities, or a better job. Once you can condition the mind to your goal, your day starts to shape itself.

To be successful, we need focus, we need discipline, and we need to remove the distractions around us.

First, list 25 things you want to accomplish. This should take a week or two. Look at all areas of your life. Ask yourself: •   What do I want to accomplish in my career? •   What financial goals do I want to tackle? •   How’s my health? What can I do better? How do I stay in size 32 pants (uh, that’s mine)? •   How about my family? How do I find more quality time? •   What about charitable goals? Is there a cause I should align with? Don’t stop until you get to at least 25.

This is exactly the reason we fail to reach our goals. We keep the goalie in the net for extra defense. For safety. According to the people you hang out with, it’s the right thing to do.

My belief was (and still is) that there is way more risk in working for a company. You don’t have control over what the company does or how and when it gives out benefits. Working for someone else almost always puts a cap on your earning potential and overall freedom.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it! JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Faith is the eternal elixir that gives life, power, and action to the impulse of thought!

General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use. A lack of specialization is one of the biggest failures when it comes to content.

To be the expert in your industry, you must first define your customers’ pain points and the niche industry you will cover that will make a difference in your business and in your customers’ lives. Get laser-focused. Think of yourself as the trade magazine for your industry.

It has been said that one can create anything that one can imagine.

ideas are the products of the imagination.

Take the content that you have and think creatively about storytelling concepts—visual, textual, and audio—in new and compelling ways.

Persistence Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair.

Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. BUDDHA

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. ARTHUR ASHE

Everyone has a story to tell or product to sell. Know your audience before you open your mouth. ANONYMOUS

When it’s all about us and we are sharing what we know without a deep focus on audience desire, who really cares? Probably not very many people.

When a trout rises to a fly, it does not swim as much as tilt its fins and jet skyward. JOSEPH MONNINGER

The content tilt is that area of little to no competition on the web that actually gives you a chance to break through the noise and be relevant. It’s what makes you so different that your audience notices you and rewards you with its attention.

It’s not about that. It’s about can you solve the problem in a way that is unique? Your product does that, but your content should also do that.

Let’s say someone rounded up all your content and placed it in a box, shut away as if it never existed. Would anyone miss it? Would you leave a gap in the marketplace? If the answer to this is no, then we’ve got a problem, Houston.

think being different, going against the grain of society, is the greatest thing in the world. ELIJAH WOOD

To succeed with Content Inc., you need to create a platform that is the leading informational or entertainment resource around your content niche.

This is how to find your content tilt: •   Heading—Name the content area in a way the reader will understand. •   Subheading—Describe who the market for the content is and what benefit they get. •   Summary—Give a summary of the content and the benefit. •   Problem—Describe the problem your content solves. •   Solution—Describe how your content elegantly solves the problem. •   Quote from You—A quote from a spokesperson in your company. •   How to Get Started—Describe how easy it is to get started. •   Customer Quote—Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit. •   Closing and Call to Action—Wrap it up and point readers toward their next destination.

If you are answering how-to questions that don’t challenge conventional thinking, it will be difficult to find and develop a true content tilt.

To be truly relevant with your story, you need to focus on a very specific reader. As Stephen King says in his book On Writing, you should think about this person every time you create content.

Recombination takes two successful, independent concepts and combines them to create something new. That can be your content tilt.

Portnoy creates a specific message for a specific group of people and delivers that messaging consistently. It’s no wonder he’s built an audience of millions in a very short period.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

Everything under the sun has been said. You have to find a new way to say it. HENRY WINKLER

There are three parts to the content mission statement: •   Who is your specific target audience? •   What will you deliver to your audience? •   What’s in it for the audience?

“Our company is where [audience X] finds [content Y] for [benefit Z].”

Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses. Inc.’s mission statement includes: •   The specific target audience: “entrepreneurs and business owners” •   The material that Inc. will deliver to the audience: “useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration” •   The outcome/benefit for the audience: “running and growing their businesses”

You can’t make money off your audience until it is actually your audience.

Welcome to Digital Photography School—a website with simple tips to help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras. Let’s dissect the mission statement: •   The specific target audience: “digital camera owners” •   The material that will be delivered to the audience: “simple [how-to] tips” •   The benefit for the audience: “help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras”

SectionHiker.com—a website that delivers detailed, how-to information [the content] to beginner hikers and backpackers in and around the New England area [the audience] for consistent, safe and enjoyable hiking experiences [the benefit].

To become that one resource that cuts through the clutter, the people in your audience need to believe that your content can change their lives.

It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time. DAVID ALLAN COE

It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. GARY KELLER

your ideas and stories need a place to live if you are going to succeed.

you have two choices to make when building your platform: how and where? •   How will you tell your stories? What is your core content type? •   Where will you tell your stories? What channel will you choose to distribute your content?

Figure 8.1   A successful base equals one target audience, a strong content tilt, one type of content, and one chosen platform. 1.   One key target audience 2.   One mission (content tilt) 3.   One primary content type (audio, video, textual/image) 4.   One core platform (blog/website, YouTube, Instagram, etc.)

MASTER OF NONE I have seen the following over the past year: •   A small business, just one month into its new podcast, decided to launch a video series. •   A technology startup that believed it needed to be active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok, spreading its resources across each and making absolutely zero impact. •   An email marketing company launching a “network” of 15 short films, documentaries, and audio shows, all at the same time.

There is something about focus. There is something about being truly remarkable at one thing. The problem is that it requires you to choose. It requires you to stop doing all the little things and focus on what’s really important, what will really move the needle.

Subscription companies are growing nine times faster than the S&P 500. Why? Because unlike product companies, subscription companies know their customers. A happy subscriber base is the ultimate economic moat. TIEN TZUO, AUTHOR OF SUBSCRIBED

Social media content •   Videos •   Blog posts or articles •   Email newsletters •   In-person events •   Webinars/online events •   White papers/e-books •   Print magazines •   Podcasts

Consider three major questions when making a platform decision: The first question is personal: •   How do you best tell your story? This means you, the human being, with all your gifts and talents. In some cases, the best way to tell your story for your particular niche audience might be a podcast or a video series, but maybe you have more of a passion for writing or design.

The next two questions are all about reach and control. •   What channel offers you the best opportunity to reach your target audience? (Reach) •   What channel gives you the most control over presenting your content and building your audience? (Control)

If you choose a low-control channel as the main driver of your content distribution, be aware that at some point you’ll want to convert the subscribers on that platform to your own subscribers. If you choose a high-control channel, like a website or an in-person event, you’ll need to create a more robust plan to drive an audience to those venues.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. OSCAR WILDE

Positive content experiences come from analyzing what you have, mixed with information gathering about your audience. If you don’t intimately understand both, success will be challenging.

Natalie Goldberg, author of The True Secret of Writing, outlines the rules of freewriting: •   Give yourself a time limit. Write for a set period and then stop. •   Keep your hand moving until the time is up. Do not pause to stare into space or to read what you’ve written. Write quickly but do not rush. •   Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style. Nobody else needs to read what you produce. •   If you get off topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway. If necessary, write nonsense or whatever comes into your head, or simply scribble. Do anything to keep the hand moving. •   If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you’re writing, ask yourself what’s bothering you, and write about that. •   When the time is up, look over what you’ve written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on in a subsequent freewriting session.

Record it. As with your 50 questions or freewriting exercise, just have them get it out. Get together for coffee with your employees and record the conversation. Simply talk with them about the challenges they are seeing. Before you know it, you’ll have 20 content ideas. •   Storyboard it out. If the employees are having a tough time opening up, tell them to visualize what they want to say and write down key phrases or concepts on sticky notes. They can even draw what they’re thinking. This is an especially great way to organize thoughts for a longer piece.

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. STEPHEN KING

You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once. OPRAH WINFREY

To be great, you have to show up. Then you have to be interesting. Every. Single. Time.

Whom are you creating content for? Keeping your target audience top of mind as you create your calendar will be essential for planning how to deliver on its needs through your content marketing. •   Why are you creating content? Your content mission and goals will affect what you publish, where you publish, and how often, as well as how your team prioritizes and organizes its content creation efforts. For the most part, your content’s success will be based on getting or keeping subscribers (see the chapters on audience building). •   What resources do you have at your disposal? You might have a dedicated team of writers and videographers, a stable of industry pros looking to share their insights, a handful of reluctant execs who will need some serious content creation hand-holding. Or maybe it’s just you. The formats, frequency, and overall work flow you track in your calendar will likely depend on who is writing and where his or her expertise lies. •   How can you stand out? What unmet industry needs can your content address? What gaps exist in your current content creation efforts—or the efforts of your competitors? What industry events happen throughout the year to which you can tie your content for added exposure? Knowing where you can play a lead role in owning the audience’s attention will help you fill your editorial calendar with effective content that helps you meet your business goals.

Our goal should always be to create the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of results. ROBERT ROSE

The best content teams have a great idea of what they will publish over the next month—and know exactly what they will publish over the next two weeks. If you and your team don’t know what content you’ll produce, this will lead to lackluster content and process mistakes that will take a toll on your model.

None of us is as smart as all of us. KEN BLANCHARD

You can only build something massive by starting with something small to effectively close the distance. DANNY INY

When you give your ONE Thing your most emphatic “Yes!” and vigorously say “No!” to the rest, extraordinary results become possible. GARY KELLER

Though activity metrics are critical to measure the success of your content, your ultimate goal should always be to get and keep an audience. A laser focus on that makes all the difference.

As you employ your Content Inc. base strategy, you need some kind of email offering. This could be a: •   Daily email newsletter based on your original blog •   Daily email newsletter curating the best information from the web •   Weekly email newsletter or weekly report offering original industry insight •   Report offering a fresh idea to your audience every month

Morning Brew sends an automated email to subscribers who open a certain number of emails.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. ISAAC ASIMOV

While setting your content to be found is not rocket science, most companies don’t do the small things necessary to be found by search engines and social media.

Influencer marketing is getting others to share your story, generate interest, and make your case. ARDATH ALBEE

Most businesses that leverage an influencer strategy do not have a defined process. When you execute your influencer strategy, do it with a specific group and cadence of content sharing. Why? You want the influencer’s audience to be your audience.

Social media is not about the exploitation of technology, but service to community. SIMON MAINWARING

You don’t have to be active on every social channel. At the start, choose the best two or three and put resources behind just those.

you don’t have room to fail, you don’t have a way to grow.”

Facebook post should be very different than one on Pinterest, or Twitter, or LinkedIn. For many creators, though, it’s just “Ugh, just put it all out, because you’ve got the tool, so you do it and you hit send so it goes to all your channels.” MICHAEL WEISS, SPEAKER AND CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIST

I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy. WARREN BUFFETT

Ma’am, I don’t doubt the steak was overcooked, but did you have to eat it all before you complained about it? DAN FROM THE MOVIE WAITING

It will take time to find the right monetization model for your business. In the meantime, begin to experiment with different ways to make money from your content asset.

“An MVA is the point when your audience starts growing itself through social sharing and word-of-mouth.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. DAVID BRINKLEY

Just as an investor diversifies a portfolio with multiple stocks and/or mutual funds, entrepreneurs need to diversify the revenue streams generated from their content and audience building.

If you are trying to find the impact of your content, here are a number of questions to consider: •   Are subscribers more likely to buy? •   Are subscribers more likely to buy new products? •   Do subscribers stay longer as customers? •   Do subscribers talk more about us on social (word of mouth) than nonsubscribers? •   Do subscribers close faster than nonsubscribers? •   Do subscribers buy more on average than nonsubscribers? A yes answer to any one of these can justify the investment behind a Content Inc. approach.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Buy land, they’re not making it anymore. MARK TWAIN

If you determine the properties you want to purchase and build relationships with those owners over time, you improve your chance of buying the property at a good price.

This is what great media companies do: they look to acquire first and build second.

“It’s much harder to go from zero to one, than from one to 100. Always look to buy first.”

Making acquisitions as a small company might seem daunting, but don’t be phased. I’ve been involved in deals that have taken a week and some that lasted a year, from $15,000 total to more than a million dollars. Sometimes the best deals happen very quickly and cost just a few thousand dollars.

What’s truly important—and what I find myself forgetting and having to relearn—is that right here, right now, I am free. Free to be myself and to express myself. KAT VON D.

As an artist, as a brand, as a rapper, as a musician, you know you got a window and a lot of people. Even an athlete; they don’t have an exit strategy. It’s just living in the false reality that it’s going to be like this forever. NIPSEY HUSSLE (AKA ERMIAS JOSEPH ASGHEDOM)

We conferred with our accountant and attorney, did the math, and realized we’d need to sell for 10 million, considering employee gifts as well as federal and state taxes.

Visualize yourself and your family in 10 years. Where are you? What are you doing? What’s different? How are you making the world a better place?

steps in creating an exit strategy. 1.   Decide on a target date for a change in your role. 2.   Get feedback from your family or investors. If you have loved ones working inside or outside the business, they need to be aware of your thinking. 3.   Create the plan. You can sell the company to your children, to employees, or to a strategic or financial buyer. You could also merge with another company. 4.   Once complete, publish the plan. Your management and family members should know your intentions. One of the best things we did when we sold CMI was making sure the management team knew ahead of time and was compensated on any transaction. 5.   When you’re ready, start implementing the plan.

percent of the first 2 million •   3 percent of the next 2 million •   1 percent of the next 10 million deal, the fee would be 10 million. For our deal, we agreed that: 1.   Financial advisor receives 2 percent of the sale price up to 10 million. 3.   Fee for a successful sale capped at 150 per hour if there is no deal. In this case, we had our financial advisor keep track of the hours.

Never be afraid to ask for anything. The worst that could happen is that people say no.

In life you have three options with any situation that is a challenge. Remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it. PHIL MCGRAW

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. PETER DRUCKER

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If it takes 5 years to create a $5 million asset, what could you accomplish with your Content Inc. model in 10 years?

Selfish content marketing. Create content that solves customers’ pain points or touches on aspirations. Stop talking about your products and services so much. If you do, make it about your customers.

Everything is impossible until it happens. NELSON MANDELA

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. CHE GUEVARA

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