Why the Creator Economy Needs a Creator-Focused Event with Joe Pulizzi: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level Level, the all in one sales and marketing marketing. platform on today's classic episode we'll be breaking down why the creator economy needs a creator focused event to drop these value bombs i brought to joe polizzi into eofire studios joe is the founder of multiple startups including content creator education site the tilt and is the best-selling author of seven books including content inc and today we'll talk about how you need to teach yourself to be successful how to figure out your content tilt pick a platform be patient and move forward and oh so much more.

0:40And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Joe and our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to launch your own sports betting platform? Odds Jam's real-time API is trusted by companies big and small from lean startups to major players like Stats Perform and SportsBet.io. Visit oddsjam.com slash odds-api to learn more and talk with our team today. Mention Promo Fire Nation to receive an exclusive discount. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:19Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Joe, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. JLD, I am so excited to again be on. Sixth time. Sixth time. Oh my God, this is amazing. We've been friends for a long time, so I certainly appreciate it. Now, what do I believe? I've talked about this on your show before, but I really believe that you need to teach yourself how to be successful. At least I have. I've had to teach myself how to be successful, and I've done that through my goal setting.

2:05I know how big of a goal setter you are. So every day I get up and I review my goals, and it gets me set for what I'm going to do during the day. I really believe if you want to do this, you've got to set your goals, whatever they are, five to six goals that you can actually measure, and you review them when you get up in the morning and you review them before you retire at night. And I believe that's the way to accomplish those goals and you get your mind working on it all day long and you focus on the right things. And you can't just say, oh, I wanna do this. You have to set the path to success and you have to actually write these things down.

2:41Well, speaking of goals, Fire Nation, Joe did share with me that one of his 2022 goals is to travel at least one time per month in the year 2022. And I'm trying to convince him to spend at least one of those 12 trips in Puerto Rico so that we can take his Web3 awesomeness that he's created and creating and get to keep all that and just pour it right back into all the things that you're doing. I mean, there's nothing better than doing that. So Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the introduction, why? Why the creator economy needs a creator-focused event? Now, let's just be frank. Most content creators, Joe, they are frustrated these days.

3:25And the reality is they're just doing it wrong. That's where their frustration is coming from. So tell us more about this. As you know, I planned on retiring. We had a successful exit with Content Marketing Institute in 2016, and I was writing novels. And because of the pandemic, got back into this whole creator economy thing. And actually what I saw a lot of the media sites out there and some other content creators really talking about was this reliance on platforms and how to be successful. You need to you need to focus on YouTube and Twitch and Facebook and Instagram. By the way, nothing wrong with those things.

4:06But what you're doing as a creator when you just focus on the platforms is you're giving away all your control as a content creator. and you're not learning how to build a business as a real entrepreneur. So that concerned me. That was one thing. And the other thing is, I don't think a lot of people understand you do because you've been doing this for a while. I've done this on four different stints. I don't think they realize the consistency and the time it takes to be a successful content entrepreneur. And so I'm all about making sure I get out there and educate people on this. And I basically switched directions.

4:40As you know, 2021 made the whole switch back over to focusing on helping content creators learn how to be content entrepreneurs and that there is a way, there is a business model to this. And it's not all about just relying on these rented platforms. And these creators are building on rented land and I'm frustrated with it. And I get concerned when after six to nine months, and they're just focusing on one type of revenue from YouTube or Twitch or wherever, and they're stuck and they don't realize that they become slaves on these platforms and there's a better way to do it. There's a better way to do it.

5:16And Joe, I'm really glad and excited to welcome you back to the fold. I mean, I thought that we were saying goodbye to one of the, you know, just classic Web 2 entrepreneurs of our generation when you quote unquote retired. But now you've come back into this Web 3 world, which you have embraced with quite an amazing energy and fire. So we hear this term, Web3, it's thrown around a lot. So maybe just go through it. And I don't even know if I could do a good job describing Web1, but maybe let's just see what you can do. Like, what do you think, in your own opinion and definition, is Web1? What is Web2?

5:55And then what is this new Web3 that we've now entered? And why do entrepreneurs need to pay attention? Yeah, there's no easy way to put it, but I'll do my best, JLD. So if you look at Web 1 and started in the mid to late 90s, it was really about the democratization of content where it used to be you had your television stations, you had your newspapers, your magazines, you had media companies that controlled the sources of content. And we didn't have much of a choice as consumers. Well, now the Web, the Internet was born and you can get content in many different ways. If you remember Alta Vista, that YouTube and went into Netscape, and we were able to actually get content from other places and realize there were other sources in the world.

6:36And so this was a whole new thing. And then we move into this idea of Web 2. And Web 2 was, we thought, was going to be sort of our savior where you could get content creators that could really make a living. But really what we saw more than anything else was centralization, where you had the power of content creation went to just a small set of platforms, YouTube, Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. You had Facebook and Instagram. You had Google and Google Search. They really started to own these gateways. So in a way, it's great. We saw the advent of social media and we could make friends. But if you're looking at it from a content creation standpoint, what did we do?

7:21We basically helped these platforms build their businesses and become, you know, multi-billion dollar organizations, which, by the way, is fine. I've got no problem with it. But it's really hard for content creators out there to make a living. And now the reason why, to your point, the reason why I came out of retirement and did this whole thing is I guess what people are calling Web3 now. And Web3 is a move toward decentralization. So in Web2, I really think we've gotten past that point of peak Web2 where we're starting to move from centralization to decentralization. And it's all about the token.

7:57It's all about this idea that content creators can build their own business models and they can do so through an open blockchain, which is the fact that if I'm an artist or if I'm a content creator, I can build access to my content through, let's say, an NFT program. or like we do at the Tilt through a social token program where people who want to be a part of our community can do so by purchasing Tiltcoin or by doing the right behaviors. And we would give out Tiltcoin. You've seen things like Constitution DAO launched, which is a great experiment in what's called a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, which is, again, run on the token.

8:40so I don't want to get too down the rabbit hole here John but I think the idea of the token is so important to making this possible and if you see if you think and I've been talking about this forever about email being like the ultimate opt-in subscription well what is more ultimate than ultimate it's probably the token is the the place that if somebody can own a token from you as a creator they have a little piece of ownership they have a little piece of co-creation that's never been possible before. So in the pad in Web 2, I could create a membership program and that's fine. And I have to re-up that membership program every year.

9:18Maybe I'm subscribed to Business Insider or New York Times or whatever, but I don't have any ownership there. I have no say. I have nothing. But in this new Web 3 economy, I actually have something that I can own through the token, through an NFT, through a social token that I can trade that actually has monetary value, that I can be part of a community like I've never had the opportunity to be part of a community before. And I can tell you firsthand, John, that people that are a part of this token economy, if you will, this Web3 economy, and we have, you know, 1500 plus Tiltcoin owners, they are more loyal and more involved in our community than I've ever seen before.

10:00And I think it's because there is a difference. They actually feel like they're more a part of something and it's just It's not, oh, I'm a subscriber or I pay you for content. It's because I'm actually a part of this community and I can actually see things and make things change that they couldn't before. There's so much here, Fire Nation, and so much exciting things coming in both the near and long-term future. I mean, I personally love what Joe's doing with the TillCoin, and it's just so fascinating to see that. And it just makes so much sense on so many levels because, you know, for years now, people pay me to join Podcasters Paradise, when they pay like$1 ,000 to join, they're not thinking that money's coming back to them.

10:40Like that money is a payment that they've made. It's gone. Now, if Web3 was around back in 2013, for instance, when I launched Podcasters Paradise, I could have made like a Paradise coin. And that Paradise coin, they could have paid$1 ,000 for it. But now they're probably pretty excited because they're like, man, I think John could really build something special here. And so although I paid$1 ,000 to acquire this coin, that's giving me access to podcasters paradise, which is fantastic. The value of this coin could very likely go up and up and up. And this$1 ,000 coin could be worth$500 in 10 years.

11:17And I could get half of my money back if I decided to sell at that point, or it could be worth$500 ,000 in 10 years. Like, again, who knows? It's going to be supply and demand based off of what the market deems it's worth, the value is. But if I'm able, for various reasons, to attach massive value to the paradise coin, then all of a sudden it becomes necessary. And there is only a certain amount of supply because, you know, maybe I've limited it to 10 ,000 coins per se. And so there's a limited supply. And people that want access to what I'm teaching about podcasting, they have to buy that coin from somebody who's willing to sell.

11:53and there's not that many people willing to sell, man, supply and demand happen. And this is actually happening right now in a really, really cool scenario that I'll go through very quickly just to give you guys a real-time example. And I'm not sure how well you know of or even potentially know Joe, Kevin Rose, the - Oh yeah, sure, absolutely. The founder of Dig. So he was a Web2 guy, got into Dig early, which is kind of like a little bit similar to Reddit in some ways and other companies like that. And he just like 15 days ago launched, well, he now for like a year has had two podcasts on crypto, one called Modern Finance and one called Proof Collective, which was just focused on NFTs because he's gone really far down this NFT rabbit hole.

12:39And he launched a 1 ,000 pass Proof Collective membership card. And there's only 1 ,000 total. And that's going to give you access for a minimum of three years into a private Discord with Kevin. and the other 999 holders. And you're going to be able to have conversations. He's going to be able to surprise and delight people within that with giveaways, with recommendations, with insider information, whatever it turns out to be. And it actually started at a Dutch auction of five ETH and went down 0.25 ETH every 10 minutes until it was going to bottom out at 0.5. And so I was like on the trigger.

13:20I'm like, when these start selling, I'm going to start buying. And so it got down to one ETH and then they just started going off the shelves. And I was able to snag one like at the last minute for one ETH and you go on OpenSea today and it's selling for over six ETH. So that thing that I bought for about$4 ,000 is now worth over$24 ,000. But guess what? I'm not willing to sell it because I only have one. And if I sell my one, I don't have access to his private discord that's opening up in three days for three years minimum. and he's going to be doing some other amazing things, just like Joe's doing with his Tiltcoin and his community within that as well.

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17:39So Joe, we're back. And I definitely want to leave it open for you to comment on anything about that we just talked about when it comes to, you know, Tilt and Proof Collective, what Kevin Rose is doing, which is fascinating and other people along that route as well. Like even influencers who haven't been around for a while, by the way, this guy, J-R-N-Y, I have two of his membership cards because he's kind of established himself as an influencer in the crypto space. And now that's going to be an interesting thing to see what he creates going forward. So should content creators like yourself, like Kevin Rose, like JRNY, like myself, should we be building our own mini economies?

18:18And if yes, how? Well, I think if you're serious about being a content entrepreneur, the answer is yes. And I think the way to do it is you have to start by building an audience. And I think that's where a lot of, you know, you and I, we're into the Web3 space. We see a lot of the crypto folks that are talking about their new NFT projects, which is all great. But what they do is they don't talk that you have to build an audience first. And so what we want to first do is build that audience, build that community. So pick your platform. You know, what is that? What is that platform you're going to build?

18:49Is it you with a podcast? Is it us at the Tilt with an email newsletter? Build that audience, build that community. And then you can figure out what your business model is. If you decide to create that community on a social media platform, that's fine. But you need to have a strategy at some point to move that over. So we want to say you build that on Instagram or Twitch. Totally fine. But at the end of the day, that's not your audience. You're renting that audience. So you have to move that over. You can move that over to email newsletters like you've done really well with your podcast to your email newsletter like we've done, really focusing on our email newsletter program.

19:24or you can just say, all right, how long is it going to take me to build this audience on the rented land and move this over to some owned controlled property? And then you get into the Web3 components. Then you could say, okay, I have this idea of a token like Kevin Rose did with his project. We've done a couple of examples here that have worked really well. I'll share with you. The One is I talked about Tiltcoin. For example, if you own 20 Tiltcoin, you are a VIP member of our community. You get all our education for free. You get 50 % off of any new products and services we launch. And if you were in early, it was$0.36 when we launched in March of 2021, John.

20:08And now we're well over$35 a coin. So that's 100x. So you could have got in for 10 bucks to start with the VIP membership. And if you want VIP membership today, it's going to cost you a lot of money, which people do. But again, if you're in early on these communities, like you were with the Kevin Rose example, that's fantastic. And we've also done something, and I know we'll talk about this in a little bit, but Brian Clark and I launched our Creator Economy Expo event, which will be in May of 2022. But we launched 100 never-ending tickets, similar to what Kevin Rose launched, but ours are just limited to 100.

20:46and we just started selling these things. And basically what we're doing with ours is you can buy this NFT and you get admission into our Creator Economy Expo event for life, not just three years, for as long as we do the event. And at the same time, you get VIP access. So if you have one of these NFTs, every time you go, you get access to the VIP reception. You get a private Discord with Brian Clark and myself, and you get all sorts of benefits that we've just launched. We've had a number of people already buy these. They're pretty excited about it. But I think these are the things that content creators can think about.

21:21Do I know if this is the model of the future? TLD? I don't know. But we're testing these things out. I think it's our responsibility to test these out and to see what's going to work, what model is going to make sense. And it's kind of an open playbook because we're just getting out of the dugout for this thing. We don't know where it's going to go. But I do know that the token is going to bind this whole thing together. It's basically the promise of what the internet always should have been. And now creators can sort of take back from the Facebooks and the Instagrams and the Amazons of the world and say, look, we want to create something with an audience and build something together, really co-create something.

21:58And now because of the token, it's possible. Well, that is where I want to go next because the pandemic did leave this gaping hole in both the creator education world and also in just the, you know, in real life networking world. So talk to us. Do we need a physical event? Break down what you are doing. I'm bullish on physical events. And I know the pandemic is continuing to be with us. It probably will be for a long time with whatever variants. But we're human beings. We learn best. We interact best through human interaction. As you know, we launched the event Content Marketing World, which you were a part of in 2011.

22:39Wow. And that still goes on today and went from, you know, we were hoping to get 100 people in Cleveland, Ohio in 2011. And we had 600 that year and it grew a couple of years later to a 4000 person event. I think that those types of events bind the community together. And so I think there is an opportunity for in-person. I think you're going to see a boom in in-person events at the end of 22 into 23, 24. So if you're a creator and you're thinking about doing something in person, I think now is really the time to think about this. The other thing, the reason why that, you know, that we decided to go forward and really push into the new event area is, I don't know if you noticed this, but a number of the creator economy, so-called creator economy events out there are first platform.

23:28And that's what they talk about. And they say, here's how you can be successful on all these platforms that you have no control over. And it hurts, man. I'm like, no, don't teach the next generation of content creators to just focus on other people's platforms. Let's focus on them building a business. If you look at the greatest media companies of all time, they've learned to leverage social media platforms, but they aren't beholden to them. So I think it's our responsibility, your responsibility, mine, Brian Clark's responsibility to get out and say, look, you have to figure out that there is a business model here.

24:03There's never been a better time to be a content entrepreneur, but you have to do it the right way. And I think the best way that we can do that is through in-person instruction. so Brian and I decided okay let's do this we're going to limit our first year event in May 2nd to 4th Creator Economy Expo CEX we're going to limit it to 500 people so we've already you know as we're recording this now we're about 20 percent sold I'm assuming in the next couple months we'll be sold out and we would love to get the you know the next generation of content creators there to figure out okay how do we build an audience what are the new business models what are the revenue models and how do we evolve from this web two world, this web two economy into web three, where there's a new business model that we've never thought of before that content creators for the first time, musicians and artists and bloggers and writers and video producers can actually build a multimillion dollar business model and they don't have to necessarily do it because of Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

25:05Joe, take us home. What is the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today? Let's kind of make it Web3 focus. I'm sure you were. And then give us the best way to keep up with all you have going on. Of course, let's go ahead and talk again about access to this event, capped at 500 people, and then we'll say goodbye. Well, the first thing is you have to figure out what your content tilt is if you're going to do this. So what's your area of differentiation? What's your hook? What makes you special. And then pick one base. You don't have to be everywhere your customers are at online.

25:40You can actually pick one. It can be a social one. If that makes sense, it could be YouTube, but have that plan to move off of that. This is a process. It took you nine to 12 months. It took me about 22 months to really build a minimum viable audience to monetize that. So we need to be patient. We need to move forward. But as I said before, this is the heyday of content creators and content entrepreneurs. I want everyone who wants to do this to be able to do this. That's I mean, I'm not really in it for the money anymore, John. I had my exit. That's fantastic. My family's taken care of. I'm in it to help educate people and to help them build, you know, whatever they want to build, have a successful financial career, build for their families and build for their next generation of kids as well.