252. From Broke to $15 Million: Joe Pulizzi's Proven 5-Step Strategy
In 2008, Joe Pulizzi and his wife were broke. Fast forward to 2016, and they sold their business for a staggering 15 million dollars. How did they manage such a remarkable turnaround? In this blog post, we'll delve into the five-step process Joe used to transform his financial situation and build a hugely successful business. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to scale your business or someone seeking inspiration to achieve your goals, Joe's insights are invaluable. Let's explore how you too can apply these principles to achieve extraordinary success.
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Timestamp:
00:00 From Broke to $15 Million: Joe Polizzi's Journey
00:53 The Power of Goal Setting
03:00 Balancing Life and Business Goals
04:22 Building an Audience and Becoming an Expert
05:28 The Pitfalls of Diversifying Too Early
06:44 Consistency is Key: Delivering Over Time
09:42 Recap and The Transformative Question
12:08 Conclusion and Next Steps
Ash Roy's and Joe Pulizzi's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Joe Pulizzi:
In 2008, my wife and I were broke. We didn't have any money.
Ash Roy:
Imagine setting a goal to sell your business for $15 million when you're completely broke.
Joe Pulizzi:
Throwing out a silly goal, you know, $15 million in seven years is ridiculous when we had nothing at the time.
Ash Roy:
But Joe Polizzi and his wife did it.
Joe Pulizzi:
The brain does magical things when you sleep, whether you believe it or not.
Ash Roy:
And today we're going to break down the Five step process that Joe used. To go from zero to a $15 million exit, a process that you too can use to transform your business and or your life.
Joe Pulizzi:
Ash, it's been a long time. I can't believe it. So, I'm looking forward to chatting again and catching up.
Ash Roy:
Joe also asked himself one simple question every day, which was absolutely transformative.
What was that question you asked every day? And we'll come back to that question later, but for now, here's the Five Step Goal Achievement process that Joe used to build his business from zero to $15 million. Let's do this. Okay.
Step one, understand this is a marathon and not a sprint, write down your goals and review them daily.
Joe Pulizzi:
This is a marathon and it's not a sprint. You know, you have to do this consistently every week. And that's why you're getting Guy Kawasaki and that's why you're getting Brian Tracy on your podcast, because you've built an audience and they want to get in front of that audience and you can now monetize that any way you choose.
Ash Roy:
Joe made it a habit to read his goals every morning and night and map his actions to his goals.
Joe Pulizzi:
Because my goal setting is, has been so important to my career and writing things down and then making sure that I'm doing the right thing. So, as I would read my goals and I had usually six to eight goals that I would review first thing in the morning before I got started and then before the end of the day, and I will ask myself, oh, it's the next thing I'm going to do.
Help me get to that goal that I just read. And that's why I love doing that first thing in the morning. You get involved in email, you get in social media, you get in your phone. I mean, you might be unproductive. You might do some things that's not going to help you to reach that goal. Because as you know, I mean, 2008, my wife and I were broke.
We didn't have any money throwing out a silly goal, you know, $15 million in seven years is ridiculous. When we had nothing at the time, but reviewing that in the morning. And then before going to sleep at night was important because the brain does magical things when you sleep, whether you believe it or not.
I believe that I would wake up with all kinds of amazing ideas, how to review that goal, and I would make decisions so that we accomplish those goals. And the deal went through in June of 2016. So, I tell everyone record your desires, review your desires on a regular basis, and then remove all the things that are in your way that are not helping you achieve your goals.
Ash Roy:
Well, congratulations, man, because I mean, that is such an amazing story. If you're new here, my name is Ash Roy. I'm an ex-banker with a CPA and an MBA, and I love bringing you the latest thinking in business productivity and entrepreneurship. If you've already subscribed, thank you for subscribing. And if you haven't, please consider subscribing because as we grow this channel together, we can reinvest in better quality production, invite more interesting guests and do deeper research, all of which will help you to grow your business.
And your brand. Thanks in advance for subscribing.
Step two, break down your goals into categories to ensure that your life is in balance. Joe separated his goals into several categories like spiritual, financial. By making sure that he was not just focused on business goals, he was able to bring balance into his life which, paradoxically enough, helped him to focus better on his business when he was working on his business.
Joe Pulizzi:
I would not just focus on business goals. Ash, it was really important for me to, to separate those goals into multiple categories. So, I would say, okay, what are my financial goals? And I would pick one or two of my spiritual goals.
What are my philanthropic goals? What are my mental goals? What are my family goals? What are my physical goals? So, six areas, because what I found when I was starting in business, 2007, 2008, when I started what became Content Marketing Institute, I was so focused on the business side. I sort of lost touch, as you were saying, with the personal side of this.
There's more than just business. There's more than just money. So, you have to kind of say, okay, well, what do I need to do to have a great family life? What do I need to do to be a great father? What do I need to do so that I can live for another 80 years? You know, those types of things. And you meld those together, you have six or eight goals that you're reviewing your life will change.
Ash Roy:
I agree completely. It is such an important point because if you are myopically obsessed with business goals, you'll probably end up doing it at the expense of other goals. So that's right. Such a great point.
Step three, Build an Audience and be perceived as the leading expert in the eyes of that audience.
Here's Joe explaining how he did it.
Joe Pulizzi:
But then as I launched my own business, which became Content Marketing Institute, I Or as I started to look at different businesses like Brian Clark's copyblogger.com, I said, there's something bigger here. First of all, you have to actually build a loyal audience where you become the leading informational expert in something.
Where most people go wrong, Ash, is they have no, what we call a content tilt. There's no differentiation. You have to start with a hook. You have to figure out, well, why are they going to pay attention to my content? How is it helping them live a better life or get a better job? So that's the first part. Uh, if you just look at basic content marketing, you have to be delivering something unique and something that's going to make an impact on that audience's jobs or life in some way.
Most content doesn't do that. Most content is terrible. Most content is a waste of time.
Ash Roy:
So as Joe Pullizi correctly says, most content is terrible. By creating differentiated content, you position yourself as the expert. But now here's the most important part.
Which brings us to step four, and that is don't diversify too early, stick to one channel and master it.
Here's Joe explaining the importance of not diversifying too early and the importance of consistency over time.
Joe Pulizzi:
Then you go on to the most important part. What most companies do is when they fail in content marketing is they diversify too quickly. They'll say, oh, okay, we've got our differentiation area.
We've got a hook. And now we're going to target this audience. And we're going to do a podcast and we're going to do a YouTube series. And we're going to be on TikTok and we're going to be on Twitter and we're going to do Twitch and we're going to do magazine and God knows what else, a blog, newsletter, everything.
I've been in way too many companies, Ash, and I've done way too many content audits to find out that's what's being done most of the time and they never work. You, you diversify too quickly, you become jack of all trades, master of none, and you never create anything great. You never create anything indispensable.
So, what's the formula? The formula is you've got to choose. The strategy is all about choosing. You have to say no to some things. You have to say no to the podcast so you can be great at the email newsletter. You have to say no to the YouTube series so you can be great at the podcast, depending on whatever you choose. So, it's unbelievable.
If you just look at it, it's a very, very simple model. What's my hook? What's my differentiation? That's my content tilt. And then what's my home base? What's my
Ash Roy:
And now for the fifth step? Once you've established your audience, deliver consistently over a long period of time, and your audience will tell you what products to create for them, which they will then buy.
You have escape velocity. You have a business that has the potential to skyrocket and do so profitably. Here's Joe explaining exactly how that happened. For Content Marketing Institute, which is what led to the $15 million exit.
Joe Pulizzi:
You deliver consistently over a long period of time. You build what Brian Clark says himself is a minimum viable audience.
And then what you do, once you do that, and you have an audience that knows, likes, and trust you. Not only will they buy whatever you offer, they will tell you what they will buy, which is what happened with our situation with Content Marketing Institute. When we started, we built an audience at about 10, 000 opt in email subscribers.
We were driving a really good audience with our blog, but the products that we were launching were not working very well. But then I started to look at the blog comments and I started to look at the email comments. And what I found out was, oh my gosh, they're saying, Joe, can you offer training? Joe, is there a physical event that you could offer?
There's no big content marketing events. And I'm like, oh my goodness, they're telling us exactly what to offer. We built the audience. We had that. They know they knew, they liked us. They trust us. And then we went and launched. You know, what became, you know, what we sold for in 2016, the content marketing world, wasn't even our idea.
It was our subscribers’ idea. And in three years from that time, it was a 5 million US event. So, it's just those types of things. And the, the problem is at most organizations that are creating content, they stop. They don't go through the tough times of 6 months to 18 months where it's barren, where it's tough to build an audience.
Audience building, if you want to really build a sustainable business, it takes time. This is a marathon and it's not a sprint, you know, you, I mean, you have to do this consistently every week. And that's why you're getting Guy Kawasaki. And that's why you're getting Brian Tracy on your podcast. That's why they want to be there because you've built an audience and they want to get in front of that audience.
And you can now monetize that any way you choose, but you're going to be done so with respect to your audience. So. It's not rocket science. Anyone can do this. But the problem is, is most people just, they don't have the patience. They don't have the grit and they can't get to like what we did. You know, it took us 22 months, 22 months of delivering a blog post every day to get to what we felt was an audience we could really monetize.
And then once we did that, the revenue and profit just shot through the roof. But again, the first 22 months we were struggling. I didn't think we were, I thought it was a big failure. I didn't think we were going to make it. That's how we do it. There is a formula. It was, you know, we talk about it in Content Inc. the book.
It's a seven-step formula. Anyone can do it. You wonder why there's not more of these businesses out there because they can't make it through the first 12, 18 months. They just can't do it. They don't do it. Once you make it through that, then you're like, oh my gosh, it's, it's wonderful. There's bright lights out here.
There's people giving me money, but you got to get there first.
Ash Roy:
Okay, so here's a recap of the five-step process that Joe used to build and sell his business for 15 million dollars.
Step one: Write Down your Goals Daily. Understand it's a marathon and not a sprint. Map your daily actions to your goals.
Step two: Break your Goals into Separate Categories so you move forward with a balanced approach. Paradoxically enough, it turns out that you can't just focus on your business goals if you want to be successful at business. You need to focus on different areas in your life, including your physical goals, your spiritual goals, your philanthropic goals, all of which come together to build a balanced approach, which then enables you to be successful in business.
Step three: Build an Audience and become an Expert in that audience's eyes by delivering differentiated content that is tailored to their problems.
Step four: Don't Diversify your Content Efforts too Soon. Many companies try and do podcasting and YouTubing and blog posting and emailing, and they don't do any of them well.
Joe's advice, stick to one thing and do it really well. Master it. before you move on to the next.
Step five: this is probably the hardest of them all, and that is to Deliver Consistently over a Long Period of Time. Joe blogged for about 22 months consistently every week, often when it seemed like it wasn't working.
You've got to trust the process. Okay. Now the start of this episode, I asked you to stick around because I was going to share the one question that Joe asked every day that was transformative. Here it is.
In 2008, you had written down a goal that you were going to sell Content Marketing Institute for $15 million
by 2015, and you wrote it in the past tense. Now, you read that goal every day, and you asked yourself one question every day, and in 2016, you sold Content Marketing Institute for $15 million. What was that question you asked every day?
Joe Pulizzi:
First of all, thank you for, for bringing that up because my goal setting is, has been so important to my career and writing things down and then making sure that I'm doing the right thing.
So, as I would read my goals and I had usually six to eight goals that I would review, uh, first thing in the morning before I got started and then before the end of the day, and I will ask myself, okay, am I doing the things during the day is the next thing I'm going to do help me get to that goal that I just read.
Ash Roy:
Thanks for watching. If you found this episode useful, you definitely would want to check out my full conversation with Joe, which I linked to right here. I'll also link to it in the description below. Let me know which of these five steps you found the most useful in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.
