Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - The Secrets of Enterprise Content Marketing with Tommy Walker

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyTommy Walker, former editor-in-chief of Quickbooks and Shopify joins the podcast for an old school deep dive into the secrets of content marketing and how insurance agencies and carriers can leverage content marketing to win the long-game. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

episode of the show. Today we have kind of a different episode. Our guest today is Tommy Walker. Tommy is not from the insurance industry. In fact, he is a content marketer. He is a guy that I actually met probably 10 years ago when I was first coming up, learning content marketing, applying it to the work that I did at the Murray Group. And we used to talk and exchange ideas.

And he was on my old podcast, Content Warfare. actually this same podcast, but when it was a content marketing podcast and not just focused on the insurance industry. And we have a really deep conversation around content marketing. Even though Tommy does not work inside our industry, you are going to learn a lot. So keep your ears open, think through the things that he is saying, and really try to wrap your brain around how you can apply at least some of what we discuss in your agency or your insurance carrier or your insure tech or insurance vendor or association there is so much here to grab onto and sink your teeth into and I just think you're going to get a lot out of it and when I have a chance to bring someone

like Tommy into this podcast from outside the industry and share their expertise with you guys it's a treat for me because these are people that I know are world class and what they do and when we can mix some of that with insurance I think it helps all of us get better and just helps us push our industry forward. So these are the episodes I love. Before we get there, I want to ask you guys if you enjoy this show, please head on over to iTunes, leave a rating and review. And if you want to get emails about some of the content that I create, I wrote a post the other day on LinkedIn that has gotten a lot of quite a few reactions. I think it's got like 30 or 40 comments. You know, I sent that out to the email list and let them know that I had written it. New podcast episodes get notified

on the email list. And over the last few years, I've kind of called that list down with people who don't actually open them. So if you don't get emails from me, it may be that something happened and you just need to, you know, sign up again if that's what you're interested in. And all you need to do is go to Ryan Hanley.com. There'll be a box right up and top. Stick your email in.

Hit submit and you'll be notified when new episodes come out. And I just want to let you know that that's a thing. I don't care if you do or you don't. It's up to you. I love it if you do, but you don't have to. It's not like an obligation. I won't be personally injured. If you're not on the email list, I just like to let people know about it because it is the easiest and most convenient way for me to get you new material. And it's fun to connect. A lot of people end up responding and we have great conversations and it's just a lot of fun. So all right, beat that point up. Subscribe if you want to subscribe. Guys, I give you Tommy Walker.

This is what happens when buying a new house. I've only been here, so we've only lived here since December. So there's still noises that happen. And I have, I'm like, the hell is that noise? And then I got, you know, we got guys that mow the lawn that come and do the lawn because we have a big lawn and I just three hours a week. It's just not worth it to me. I just find zero enjoyment and mowing.

I do almost everything else, but the mowing just to come in and mindlessly. mow those are three hours of my life that i'd rather not lose yeah yeah yeah i hear you i uh we just bought a we just bought a house last year and uh we just we've been here for about a year and out and uh mowing milan is just my least favorite thing to do and we've got we've got four acres of of usable space and 10 acres total so it's just like moan in the lawn does not see like it's just not, I'm not the take a beer and mow the lawn type of guy. No, no. I mean, I like the beer part, but not the mow and the lawn part.

Right. Yeah. I'm just like, I got buddies who are like, oh, it's my favorite thing. I take the beer and I get down the tractor and I go for a ride. And I'm like, yeah, but that's like two and a half hours. You throw in weed whacking. Now you're looking at like three hours by the time you mow the whole thing and you bagg everything up. I'm like, there are a million other things I would rather be doing than that.

And for the cost, to pay someone to come mow your lawn is like nothing. Like, right. I don't know. So. And three hours worth of your time is way more valuable than three hours worth of that time. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

I've had this debate with my buddies before because I have a couple of buddies who are like so pro lawn service. And then I have other buddies who are like, oh, you know, what kind of man are you? You can't even mow your own lawn. and I'm like, yeah, smart man, I'm smart. That's what I would consume myself. I value my time. Yeah, I go, well, you know, on a Saturday I'll go fishing or, you know, take my kids for a walk or anything else than to be mowing a lawn. I just, I don't know.

I do like doing the, so we bought this house because there's a pool. And I got six, four year old now. So they just, the pool has been, the whole house is worth just the pool to me because they're in it every day. constantly they love it it's the best um i do like for some odd reason taking care of the pool something about the chemistry of like the chlorine i'm reading about bromine and ph levels and something about there's something about doing the pool that that i find some enjoyment in but like the grass mobs like oh do you ever like wish that you mowed the grass i'm like fuck no i don't Why would I care about my ass?

Do you know how pumped I am? When I see those guys walking by with the lawnmower, I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'm great. I'm good. Doing something right. All right. So, dude,

let's get into the official podcast here. And we're going to do a little freethiling. I know you had emailed me about topics and I intentionally did not respond to you. Because I wanted to, I wanted to, like your expertise is obviously, I have a high level of respect for you. We have chatted many times about a bunch of different things, but haven't had you on the show since back when this was called Content Warfare,

which, interestingly enough, we were chatting in the pre-official podcast time that I literally just had a memory on Facebook come up when this show, which then was named Content Warfare, was actually higher ranked in iTunes, than the Gary Ask Gary Vee Show. We were 17 and he was 18.

And you can see where our trajectories in life have gone. I now work in my basement in upstate New York. And he owns like a billion dollar advertising company. So there was a slight trajectory difference in those two shows. But needless to say, I think you were a guest twice and I'm just incredibly pumped to have you back. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.

I'm pumped to be back. I'm glad like, and it's been cool to watch like your journey as you've been going on because we're kind of like parallel paths like as far as when we got our starts. So it's been it's been really fun to see like the people that you're coming up with and how everybody's doing, right? Like, you know, you were saying to me beforehand like you are, you were checking out my LinkedIn profile every now and again. I do the same thing, right?

And, you know, I've seen, I've seen you go, I've seen you do your own thing quite a bit. And it's been fun to watch, like, where you land, where you end up and just ultimately knowing that you're doing the thing that makes you the happiest, right? Like, like, watching somebody do what they're passionate about and then not have any sort of, like, restrictions on that. It's always cool to watch somebody do that and know that they're being fulfilled. So, yeah, thanks for having me back on. It's, it's incredible.

Thank you. So, you know, for the people listening at home, we're going, geez, I've never heard of the Tommy Walker Insurance Agency before. Tommy is not an insurance professional. All right. He does not. He's, he, he, so this is back from the content marketing days is when we found each other. And I can't even remember how. But, um, there was only so many of us talking about this stuff, maybe back in, you know, 2010, 2011, whatever. I think I looked. And the first time you were on the show was like 2013. So that, that was a while ago. And, um, um, you know, you have sense, you know, where I kind of went full, you know, kept kind of dialing deeper and deeper into insurance and obviously took that to chief marketing officer jobs in the insurance world. You've gone much more content focused into some really large organizations and been at the beginning of taking some of the publications that to different people are very established, very well known. You were really part of taking them to that place and building out the teams that that got them there.

And I thought now was a perfect time to have you come back in. And, you know, really, I want to hear a little bit about some of the stuff that you've learned. But I just want to pepper you a question because to me, with all the craziness that's going on in the world, and that's very cliche, there's no better time to be dialing into your story, your audience, you know, how you add that all those things. things, you know, there's no better time. Right. Like we've been talking about for a decade plus now.

No better time than these uncertain times. Yes. Yeah. Let's just layer, just smather this thing with cliches. Just, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so I apologize if I go long on any of this. The only rule on the Ryan Hanley show is that tangents are acceptable.

Oh, perfect. All right, cool. So, yeah, where do you want to start? Where, where I began, I suppose. I, so I was born in the middle of a hurricane, and that sort of set the path for the rest of it, I suppose. No, no, no, no. So I was a career actor for about 10 years.

I graduated from Film Conservatory, and it was great, right? I spent an entire sort of lifetime from ages like 10 to 20, really preparing to be an actor. And like I got deep into it too. Like going to conservatory, it was like I had Meisner technique once a week. I had voice, voiceover technique, you know, twice a week. It was insane, right? And I moved back home after that.

And I was 20 at the time, 1920 at the time. And I knew everything. So I got kicked out of my house and started living on my buddy's couch and worked at a gas station across the street. from the gas station my attitude towards this stuff has always been like you know I could have been like oh I'm working at a gas station my attitude at the time was if how hard is this job really I got to sweep floors make coffee and more importantly this is one of the only jobs where you will get to meet everybody from all walks the life right like you've got truckers you've got like it's crazy I got recruited into my first company after that into my first tech company and in a year's time they went from honesty

integrity don't tell people what they need to hear in order to get the sale to a hundred salespeople on the floor just chanting money money and I'm like I can't like I was marketing I helped bring them to a certain point and I said I can't be a part of that so I left eventually I started I went back to the gas station I started working at Target after that or will say a retail store. And for the first time, I was working job since I was 13 years old. For the first time, I got fired over a pair of pants. And that's like a whole other tangent that I could go on, but I won't.

But at the time, I said, this is the stupidest reason to ever get fired. And I said, either I can go try and find another $12 hour job, or I, I can pound the pavement and like start working for myself. And if it doesn't work out, and I think a lot of people listening to the show will, connect with this at least, is if it doesn't work out, then that's on me, right? It's kind of exactly what you were just saying. If it doesn't work, then that's on me. I didn't do what needed to be done to sustain myself.

So let me go back to that, you know, that world. And that world is for people, right? I ended up in that world. So I had my first client within the span of two weeks, which was amazing. It built to a certain point. It crashed after a while. And then I started having the hustle and I started writing blog posts and getting really deep into content. Right.

And I was writing articles for like $200 an article. And at the time, I was kind of calculating it. Things got so bad that I was calculating it like, this article is my oil bill. It's going to be this article is my. rent, right? I have to do so many of these pieces in order to pay the bills. And that's when you and I met, right? That's when that's when that was, it was at that point where I was like deep in the middle of that hustle, um, of going like, you know, I have to, and I wasn't trying to get my name out there, right? A lot of people get into the content space because they're trying to get their

name out there, get their buzz, get famous, you know, grow their list and build their audience, right? And I wasn't doing that. I was just trying to make money to feed my family. But in the process, I was able to write for some really solid content marketing driven organizations. There was unbalanced. There was crazy egg. There was, you know, smashing magazine at some point. You know, and these are all leaders within their respective parts of their industry, or they were building up to become leaders of their respective thing. And eventually, I was writing for this website, conversionxel.com. now known as CXL. And I got an email at the end of the year that said, congratulations, you have the number one and number fifth most trafficked article this year.

And I said, congratulations, you have an editor, pay me a steady salary. So, so that was, that was a relief, right? Now I had this sort of, like, I could relax to a certain degree. Pep Laya, shout out if you're listening, had very strict standards for what he was willing to publish. And there were many, many, many times that I had a draft kick back to me two or three or four times and I just sweat and put blood into that piece. And I am now forever grateful for that sort of standard setting

because so much of the content space is just, and you know this, right? you built your whole thing off of content. So much of the content space are just people passing by. They're just skating. It's all top of surface thoughts. I'm going to stop talking for a second. I would love to hear your thoughts on that, just how much people just skate on.

Yeah. Well, I think most people, I'm going to say this. I'll just say it the way that I feel. I think most people when it comes to doing hard work are losers. I think they just don't want to do it. That's the way that I feel. I think that maybe 10 years ago I would have said it nicer, but I've been fired from organizations in which I was doing the best work

I've ever done in my life twice. So I think that people and my point saying that is I think people don't appreciate the work that it takes to build an audience. and I don't mean like the audience that you're going to like remark it to and do, you know, I'm talking about building people who actually care about your brand, who want to buy your product, who think about you and your company in situations that aren't just in the moment

that they click the buy button. That work takes you have to care about those people as much as you want them to care about you when you're creating content. And that is something that having now been, doing talking talks throughout different industries, but mostly the insurance industry from within a decade now, I've just come to realize that most people are completely unwilling to do that. And as I've gotten deeper into the owning an agency and being surrounded by agency owners and producers, what I've realized is this is the case in all things and that there are

groups of people who find a way to make it happen. And if you tell me that I got to write 2,000 words and care about my audience and really dive in and, you know, I'm going to do that. And then there are other people who are like, we, well, what if we do 320 words and we copy it from one of our insurance carrier partners, but we did a post this month. So we're doing it, right? And it's like, right. Those two things couldn't be farther from each other. And I have given up caring about a second. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And you've earned the. right, by the way, you've earned the right to say not have to say it nicely. Right. So like that's something that's really important to sort of put out there because you've,

you've gone deep, right? You think deeply about this stuff and it shows in the work that you do, you're not just trying to skate by and essentially just remix anybody else's format or whatever. You make the thing uniquely your own. And that's that's something that that that that I believe is one of the things that not enough people do in content. So and that really kind of plays well into this sort of next phase, right? I was at CXL, helped them get to a point like when I left, I had gotten recruited into Shopify. But when I had left, it was they had gotten to the point where they were getting ready for their first conference. They were talking about doing an academy and sort of all sorts of different stuff that has now become solidified as they run the most, you know, and I wasn't a part of any of this, but they run the most prestigious CROs sort of conversion optimization certification courses.

They have the most premier conference every year. So like, it's cool to say I have been a part of that. When I went over to Shopify, it was only a couple of months before they said, hey, how do you feel about running our enterprise blog? And I said, that'd be cool. And I was employee, like when I left Shopify, the sort of internal intranet was like 98% of the company was hired out here. And I'm like, okay, that's cool because we had gotten to a pretty solid point. When I started in Shopify Plus, I was employee number 14 and was able to build the publication to a point where it was the only marketing hire at the time and built the publication to a point that it was happening at the same time as like the first thousand or so customers. So being a part of that early growth was super cool because I got to set the standard for what the voice and the tone and all of this.

this other stuff was in order to do that and really help the company find its voice. I didn't define it. I unearthed it, right? I talked to my colleagues and sort of figured out like, you know, my philosophy on running a publication, right? And I don't like just saying running a blog, running a publication is this is the voice, the most ongoing voice of the company, right? And it has to represent. It can't just be a part of, you know, it can't just be the content team, right? Something I learned from our head of marketing that came in, shout out to Hannah Abaza, was content is too important to be left to the content team.

Right. And that's like something that's like really thinking about that. And that I think that's important for any company of any size is that, you know, if you're a solo person, it's really easy and cool to be able to go like, this is. my voice, I'm going to establish it. I can say what I want within reason that my customers are going to enjoy or whatever. But even in a small organization or a medium-sized organization, that publication is the ongoing voice of the company. So if you're writing remixed articles of somebody else or you're kind of taking a mechanical approach of all that, like that all bleeds through. That bleeds through in a way that, like, you can just tell, right? If you're having a conversation, like you and I are having a conversation, and I was just like, you know what, Ryan, content's awesome. And, you know, we should do that. Like, it, it, it comes off as

disingenuous, and it comes off, like, you're just another, you're just another person producing content. So being able to help establish that on the voice perspective is really sort of, it was really rewarding for me, it is really rewarding for me. And then also to have the opportunity to set up an infrastructure and go like, how do I solve these challenges of publishing at scale? And then I went over to QuickBooks after that. You know, I, and I did the same thing. And it's just been, it's been really cool. I did the same thing. And then even more because I started bringing together like 14 different markets internationally. And so creating a publishing operation that wasn't just limited to my sort of zone,

but then going like, so what's it like in France? What's it like in Australia? What's it like in the UK? And being able to play with that, knowing that different markets have different voices, but we still have to have a unified voice because we're still the same company. It's just, it's, it's, it's wild to, um, to be able to establish that, to grow it and to, and to get to a certain point. So I'm going to stop ranting at this point. I thought you can know it's good. It's good. I got a bunch of, I got a bunch of questions.

You said a bunch of interesting stuff in there. So, um, so the audience of this podcast is a mixture of, uh, independent agencies, um, which span two and three person shops up to, say, 50 to 100 or or more people, some of which are like me, just a single individual trying to wear as many hats as you can, prioritizing what you can, to organizations that have entire teams. And then you have insurance carriers, which usually have a marketing team of some sort. And then a lot of vendors, too, a lot of insurance technology companies, standard vendors. So that spectrum, all serving the insurance industry, there are still so few voices that are standing out. Now, every insurance, I want to particularly think about insurance companies, because if you're an insurance company leader and if I were in your shoes and I knew that someone like Tommy was on the market, I would be LinkedIning him while you're listening to this and saying, however much you cost, we'll hire you.

That's what I would do. Before our call, I was actually thinking about equity splits that I could toss at him, that he could come do what he does for my little podunk agency so that he could help me grow it because that's how valuable I think someone like this is. Wow. I didn't even know that. So that's nice. But my point in, I want to focus on insurance carriers for a second because predominantly

they are the, I'd say the one type of insurance business that I just mentioned. mentioned that all of them have a marketing team, a group of individuals who is meant to tell their story. Some of them do it better than others. I mean, you said, you know, you didn't find their voice. You didn't create their voice for these companies that you worked for. You unearthed it. What does that mean? Because I will say, in that broad sweeping stroke, most insurance carrier brand messaging content is very detached. It's very difficult to feel like you are actually engaging with a human. It feels like 17 layers of, you know, well, the legal team didn't like this word and the technology team doesn't isn't ready for you to announce this and the,

you know what I mean like it feels very disconnected? What are some of the ways that that, again, and I know you'd be spitballing, you would start to unearth that voice if, you were given the opportunity. Yeah, sure. And this is something that I've definitely done. You know, this is kind of what the past, this is the last three years, right? ClickBooks has been the biggest company that I've ever worked with. And it's really fascinating to sort of have to do that. So the work for me starts in a few different places, right? First one's always the customer. You know, what do you represent to the customer? You know, does your customer even think about you, right? And I would say in the insurance agency, customers are pretty much always just shopping around for

rates and whatnot. But like how can you stand out in an area that is, you know, quite honestly, it's commoditized in a lot of ways. And for me, at QuickBooks, it's a very similar thing, right? We're in accounting software. Accounting software itself can be, can I say it, boring? But, insurance is probably in a very similar area, but the question is, is like, how do your customers think about that, right? Are they thinking that it's a boring thing? Are they just shopping for the rates? Or, you know, and I don't want to shout out anybody in particular, are they progressive, where they've got this really solid voice in this character that starts to shine through all of things? Now, does every insurance carrier need to have flow? No. And I,

But it's something that makes it interesting. It makes something that can be attached to. And a lot of that starts with the customer, right? Because that cuts through the noise. The next thing that I would look at is if you have a partner ecosystem, how's the partner ecosystem think about you, right? Because if you're not top of mind within your partner ecosystem, you know, you're just going to be another one that they might recommend

if the person on the other side says, I don't really like that. You're just another option. You're not necessarily the option. And then you talk to the people internally. Now, what I found, to be honest, like, I'm a specialist. I specialize in content marketing. And that, to me, has always been very different from other forms of marketing, right?

You've got product marketers. You've got SEOs. You've got all of these different areas, right? So everybody that my experience has been, everybody who's in these areas, they have some really solid and valuable input. it, but their focus on their specific product, their specific landing page, their specific whatever, is way more tied to let's get a sale on the other side, right? It's money and money out. Content marketing is not necessarily that. It plays into that. And you have to be a part of that. You have to integrate into that. But it is one of those things where when you ask a marketing

team in particular, what do you think the voice of the company is, right? Or how do we sound? There's always going to be this bias of how do I make more sales? That's important, but it also has to be sort of an organic conversation that happens where a marketing team is really there to, from a voice and tone perspective, close the deal while the content marketing team is trying to start the conversation, right, and just make it so your company. comfortable closing that deal because you've spent time with that publication and going like, okay, the big phrase, and I hate it because it's so cliche at this point, but you're getting people to know you, you're getting people to trust you, you're getting people to like you, right?

No trust like. I hate that phrase so much, but it always becomes so true once you get deeper into it in the content and marketing space because then you become a no-brainer. The term I always used to use was already sold. When someone picked up the phone and called me, I wanted them to be already sold. I was just validating on the phone what they had already come to believe by spending time with my content. And that was the thought process I used to have was if I pick up the phone from someone who's calling me from my website.

and they are one, you know, they're not, you know, five rungs down the ladder already, that I'm doing something wrong. There's a piece of content that's missing. There's a topic that I'm missing. There's a stage in that content or a depth of that content that I'm missing because otherwise, they should have watched a couple videos, read a couple articles, you know, and now they're picking up the phone going, this is the company I want to work with. I just need to make sure that, you know, I'm not getting scammed.

Oh, you sound just like you do on the video. is okay great let's do business right exactly and like for me like in my personal career like just thinking about like taking taking the companies out of it anytime i've ever put my light on to just say like hey i'm interested in taking on some consulting clients for whatever right it's it's always been and i'm fortunate right i worked my ass off to get there and i did that work i front loaded that work a long time ago. I haven't published a lot of my own stuff in a long time, but I front-loaded that work so much that if I put my life on, it's like, it's almost instant. And it's because of that, right? People are already sold. They know the work. They know the care about the craft, right?

And that's because like you think, and I said this before, you think deeply about it. You care about the craft. You're not just trying to optimize for keywords and get that stuff out there. Like that's all important, but it's secondary to how do I put my blood and sweat into this page to make sure people know who I am. Within a larger organization, you have to know, like, you know, when it's an individual, it's easy to go like, let me put my blood into this. And, you know, they always say like writing is bleeding on the page and that's putting everything you've got out there. When you're in a bigger organization, and I'm just now coming up with this sort of metaphor, you have to know how that blood travels, right? You have to know the internal networks.

You have to figure out like who's the beating heart of this company, who's the brain of this company? How do I put all of that together and put that on a page that makes sense for everybody else? And that's a lot of conversations. That's a lot of understanding. So, yeah, hold on just a second. I'm just, my wife is talking to the kids downstairs. It's very loud. Yeah. Hey, hon.

She can't hear me. Let's just keep going. I couldn't even hear him. You can edit this out and post. Yeah, it's all good. Normally my dog barks or one of my kids comes running downstairs. It's all good. The audience is used to it.

So what I'm, so I can, obviously, I completely and utterly agree. I think that, I think a big part of, One of the major reasons what you just described doesn't happen in many companies is often the person who is tasked with this is not given the authority or is not given the runway or leeway, whatever your appropriate term is, to actually do that work. Right. It's here, your cubicles over there, go sit there and crank out some blog posts. And if I don't get a sale on my web form in a month, I'm going to fire you. And we're going to go back to, you know, whatever we used to do, which is usually nothing. And I think, I think that's a huge problem. So from your perspective, having been that person who, you know, who I know and sometimes wasn't given very much runway. And other times you've been given the ability to grow and expand and do that work. You know, what are some of the ideas that you could toss to a leader to say, here's what you should think about.

Here's how you can feel like you're still in control, but that your person is given the runway. Like what are some of your guidance for that relationship or that space? Yeah. So I've actually been really fortunate that with the people that I've worked with, I had that runway to begin with, right? You know, Intuit was at a place where they were like, we want to be content forward. We don't necessarily, we want to be content forward, but we need somebody to sort of drive that. And Shopify was content forward from the very beginning, right? that was that was a no brainer for them that was just they were they were a scrappy startup when I started so it was really easy for them to say like let's let's just try to do as much as we can without

spending as much redout you know add dollars as possible because that's just where it is yeah um but I have known people in that situation and it's very stressful and I empathize a lot but the it takes a certain type of personality to really do what I'm talking about And if you don't have the runway and you're getting that sort of block, you have to say, like, I can't do this, right? Like, I can't, I can't navigate the organization. I can't speak on behalf of the organization by myself. I am not the organization. And that's a lot of pressure.

And this is what I would say. That's a lot of pressure to represent, you know, four or five, 500 people, 6,000 people, right, depending on the size of the org. if you put just all of that on me, like really think about what the ramifications are for the rest of the organization if I mess up or say something that doesn't write. I can't do my job in this cubicle. Now that might come with consequences. Or if you're acting like, and you and I have talked about this being a blunt instrument, if you are acting like a blunt instrument and saying, this is not something I can do. You have to help me navigate the organization, right?

I need to be able to talk to customer care. I need to be able to talk to customers. I need to be able to talk to XYZ, right? You have to have a boss. You have to have a manager that's willing to do that and to step up to bat for you. Content marketing cannot just be one single person doing the job or two people doing the job and representing an organization of, you know,

hundreds or thousands of people, right? Yeah. I think that's, I think that's the most important point is, is you represent you, Ryan, you represent you, right? And that's great.

But what if you represented? I mean, you've been in the position where you've had to represent multiple people. And it's just your voice, right? And to be safe, you create soulless content and then you don't stand out. And then the entire sort of thing is just an exercise to say, we did content and it didn't work. Yeah. Right.

And that's devastating because every organization knows they want it. Yeah. Have you, well, I have two more things that I want to talk to you about. Have you seen, and I've noticed this over time, and it just kind of hit. me the other day as I've, well, so I've been ramping up the content side of Rogue for a while. And though, you know, if I'm being completely honest, in terms of sheer web form conversions, like in the first three months, I've seen zero. Web form conversions in three months. So, and I produce three to four pieces of content a week, their video, their text, you know,

I'm promoting them and push. And that is the game. because I'm building this foundation, right? I believe in it. I believe in content marketing. I look out, you know, so then I take, I say, I'm always trying to learn and adapt. So I said, look, I'm, you know, I want to make sure I'm continuing to be on the cutting edge of what's happening in this field. And I reach out into some of these communities that, that used to be, what I'm trying

to say is it feels like people have moved away from talking about content marketing very much. know if it's just a term. I know some of the conferences still exist. I know conversion Excel is still there. But like, you know, it feels like the widespread belief that content marketing is the primary tool of long-term sustainable growth for your online presence has gone away. And we've moved to TikTok and Instagram and stories and, you know, and then this really hard push back to PPC and Facebook advertising. And I'm not saying any of those things are wrong. It just feels like a lot of people have chased some shiny objects and this idea, which I believe is the bedrock of your digital presence and really your total presence, but you know, just

primarily digital. It's people have forgotten about it. They've forgotten. Like, you know, if we're talking broad spectrum, have you seen that? Do you feel that or? Ryan, that's all content marketing. You're talking about content marketing. It's not just writing a blog post. TikTok and YouTube and PPC. It's all content marketing now. Like Facebook ads, right?

Like this whole idea, and this is something that I've learned by working within the large organization because my direct, the team that I work with, like I work within a, you know, I work with social and experimental channels. And, you know, I have a data analyst. list on my team. Like, we all look at this, not as this individual silos. It's, you know, I work on what's the global brand content to me, right? And content marketing is TikTok and Instagram and

stories and all of that. The question that we have now, and now, I will say pulling back to go to your original point, though, have people forgotten about it? No, but that soulless, like this, whole thing that I've been talking about, this whole soulless thing, it got, flooded and it got flooded with people who just didn't give a shit right you swear so yeah no one's gonna be a yeah yeah right okay yeah so it was flooded by people who just don't give a shit or they were or people not willing to put the time in or said i've done three months i haven't seen a web you know a web form can come in okay that's done like you have to look at the spread and you have to more importantly and this is something that my mindset has flipped on entirely,

you have to be willing to say what is, where am I the strongest, right? Am I strong in video? Am I strong in podcasting? Am I strong in writing? Now, my major strength is in writing an editorial. But I am able to work with somebody who does video really well. video is still content.

And what happens is, and this is with any digital marketing space, right? Everybody does chase the shiny object. Then they dilute the space. Then nobody cares about it. Then they abandon it or say that, you know, this doesn't work. So whatever, right? Facebook is a good example, right? Like, people are still using Facebook, but Facebook has become a place not where I talk

with my friends or can, you know, put my voice out there. It's all political garbage and uncles who have completely different perspectives on that. It's not even cat names anymore. It's just a, it's just a place of vitriol. And then with the occasional buy my stuff ad that's so transparent, but it works and it works for those companies. So keep doing it, I suppose. I've lost, I've lost. No, it's okay. I know. I get what you're saying. I agree. I agree. I guess here's maybe where maybe better put this particular topic. There was a period of time a few years ago, maybe even into, and again, some of this may just be me focused on different things where the pressure, the conversation, the ideas were focused on. it felt like how do we how do we make properties we own deep and rich and conversational and

connected and that part of the conversation feels like it has changed to me and that it's so much more about your your audience here and your story here and and you know what is your what is this presence look like on this platform and um I guess I while I believe in those things they feel so fleeting to me where blog articles that I wrote 10 years ago for my wife's insurance agency she still gets calls and still writes business and it's this it's this cash machine for her and I'm like no Facebook post from 2013 is producing a new piece of insurance business today but I have multiple articles dozens of articles from that same year that are still produced because, you know, it, in a, oh, just naively, I was producing content at that time that was,

you know, real and connected and raw and a little, you know, maybe slightly off kilter for what people expected. And, you know, I just, I feel like that part of the conversation has died down a little bit. And it makes me sad because I do run up against 2020, I've come back into the game and found the landscape looks exactly the same as I left it in 2014 when I left the agency. And that to me is a little sad, I guess. Right. Yeah. No, and it varies industry by industry, right, and it varies company by company. But the conversation, you're absolutely correct, the conversation is different. The way that I look at it is long, you know, the long, you got to look at the long and the short game. And if you think about,

like the long game. These are articles that, you know, something from 10 years ago, and this is this, I experienced this too. People are looking at guest posts I wrote back in 2013 when I was doing probably some of my best writing work and going like, oh shit, like you're still good. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that's great. With the short content, which I don't participate in personally,

I've never, I'm, you won't find my LinkedIn profile is so dusty and gross right now that, that, you know, it's that. And I don't really participate in the news feed because the news feed and all the feeds get flooded. And you're right. They're fleeting. But if that's where your customer is at, right? And this is, this is something that's kind of important.

Those short game plays, they're still long term. They're just the content itself is fleeting, right? you know so no a story is going to disappear within a couple minutes but if that's where your customer's at and they're doing stories and say you're going after gen z right gen z is now just coming into their own we've got a plenty of entrepreneurs who are starting to come up very different from you and i you know it's a generational thing but that's where they're at and if you're able to create content that appeals to them when it comes time to close the deal then they're going to go to the long stuff the stuff that you've been going long for for a long time

and have that same I want to buy it for me now type idea. So, and you have to have the tolerance for that. I personally don't. And, you know, and that's why I work on a team with people who are. We did a campaign at QuickBooks that was Danny DeVito Gifts, right? He did a series of short videos for YouTube, but a lot of the traction came from the gifts that went out there. And that's not something that I, like, I don't understand it because I'm old as a millennial. What? Yeah. I love gifts. But yeah, and that's the thing. And so it's that long and

short, right? I don't, I think deep about the stuff that I do. And I know the people who I work with who do the shorter, you know, more fleeting stuff. They also think deep. But they're also thinking about the long game just in a completely different way. I think this is the most important point that that we've made, you've made on this show. And I hope that everyone takes in the depth of what we're actually talking about because this is really the game. And specifically, I'm not talking about, you know, agencies with 10 people or less who, you know, this is going to be a longer burn for you. You're just not going to be able to put out the volume of content for this to have condensed

impact. But over time, you'll see the same benefits. So don't take this to heart. But if I'm, But if I'm a middle market agency up to a carrier size organization with a solid marketing team, what Tommy's describing me is the idea is that the brand recognition is what you're really building. And it's going and it needs to come in multiple forms, both long form, deep, engaging, you know, you use the unearthed voice, unearthed tone. People are connecting to it. And that needs to match these little punches, right? and not to use probably the most cliched marketing book of the last five years, you know, the jab, jab, jab, right hook.

It absolutely is the truth. Like Gary Vee, in my opinion, nailed that idea. He absolutely nailed it. And we can't just be jabbing. We can't just be right hooking. And the worst thing is never even getting into the arena to begin with. And I think that that can also take the form of the shitty little short form, generic vanilla posts that you're copying from someplace else, that's not getting into the arena,

that you are not marketing when you do that. Right. That is, that's not engaging. The bar for doing this work has been elevated at least a little bit. It means you have to inject yourself. And in my case, you know, it's easy because it's just me, right? I have an American flag there. I talk about the Buffalo Bills.

You know, I got kids. It's very easy because it's just me. If you're a large organization, you have to do the work with Tommy described. But that work pays dividends because it's little brand. You're just building up credibility and trust in someone's mind, building, building, building, all sudden that burst and they buy some shit from you. And that's the whole game, man. Right.

I'm going to actually push back on you a little bit here. Yeah, please. Push back. That's solid. That is solid. The idea, right, and I boxed for a little while. So I boxed for about a year and a half. So like the metaphor, I always see things in metaphor.

What you're talking about long form, right, is not getting into the ring. It's conditioning yourself to get into the ring and go 10 rounds, right? And that takes for me, that's being able to write deep on deep content. For other people, it's being able to have the stamina to do multiple short form, you know, stories or whatever. And going back, tying that back to something I said way early. earlier, if you're playing to your strengths, right, you might not be good at writing blog posts all the time. You might not be able, your brain might not be wired to think that deeply about it. But if you have the sort of stamina and you've got the conditioning to be willing to do a bunch

of jabs on Instagram stories and sort of, you know, the shorter, you know, stuff that disappears in a couple of days, then you can still do the right hook. in that medium. And if you are a smaller organization and it's 10 people, then you go with whoever has the stamina to do any one of those channels. You just have to pick your channel if that channel has the right type of customer. If you are a bigger organization or a middle-sized organization, then you try to build a team that can do all of those things, right?

Because it becomes a team sport at that point. I love it. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's all conditioning. All of it is conditioning. And then it's just a matter of which, which arena, if you will, you're willing to step in. What ring are you willing to step in? Um, you know, are you specializing in boxing or are you an MMA fighter, right?

Very, very different things, but all the same level of commitment to getting into the ring in the first place. Yeah. And that's good. Damn, that's good. Glad we recorded that. That was brilliant. I'm actually, I'm actually. I think we just stopped there, man.

That was, if you're listening to this, you know, this is the game. I mean, this is what, this is how, this is how you get there. And I love that idea. I completely agree with you. I'm always probably, I always tend to tilt. And again, this is because this is where my strengths are. Like, I don't know that I'm an A player in any one level. I'm maybe like a B plus in a couple.

So I've always been, my methodology has always been to spread a little bit because I'm not, you know, like for insurance references, you know, you won't know these people at time, but these are like, I'm not as good at video as Sidney Rowe, who is one of the best at video in our entire insurance industry, right? I've never been as good as her, but I can write better than Sid, but Sid dominates me in video, right? Dominates Danny Kimball probably one of, you don't also know someone you don't know, but she runs marketing for an agency. She's one of the best short form people I've ever seen. You watch her stuff on Instagram or Facebook or wherever she's doing the vertical video, wherever that, it's awesome. It's engaging. It makes sense. It draws you in.

Then she does a great job with that. I can never, you know, I can never do that. But I do like the short form stuff. So, and I'm not just saying me. I think you have to, I think the point you just made about figure out what your, who has, I think you said, the stamina or the endurance for one of these channels, figure out what that is and then let them go to work. And then use that. jab jab, I'm sorry hook inside of that. That's brilliant, man. That's brilliant.

That, I think that's worth the price of entry for everyone who's listening here. And I just want to say, I appreciate you and I appreciate you coming on this show. And if you have the ability and you're looking for a world class content marketer, this is your guy right here. You should be flooding. You should all should have a bidding war.

If he's not already taken by the time that you hear this, you should be flooding his DMs on LinkedIn with offers like, I don't like something that people flood with offers because I can't think of an analogy an hour into a conversation. So. Awesome. Well, and thank you for the format, right? We talked about this.

I was a little, I was a little, you know, like, you're just going to make me freestyle on this. But yeah, no, some, I'm, I'm, I'm impressed. So thank you for that. And yeah, I hope this is helpful to anybody. listening. So yeah, thank you. If you want to check out my LinkedIn, it's Tommy Walker. Tommy is my name. That's my handle pretty much everywhere. Don't go to my blog. It's garbage at the moment. And by garbage, I mean, it has zero on it. But yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn or DMs on Twitter

or wherever you're, you know, wherever you've got the most stamina. So, um, appreciate you, man. I'll have it all linked up on the show notes as well. And I just, whatever the next phase is, whether it's consulting or you join. an organization. I wish you nothing but the best and just appreciate you and your work, man. Thanks, man. Yeah, that's a good one. By this time next week, sound impossible, it's not. With the one call closed system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one

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