Make Better Content With the "Bricks & Mortar" Method

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

2:21I think about great communication. I think that great communication takes time, takes thought, takes skill. It's crafted. It should be meaningful. It should be targeted to a specific audience. It isn't just content flattens everything out. Content is something that someone spent a year on and something that someone spent two minutes on. It's all the same content. So today, I want to spend a moment on what, if we have to use the word content, good content looks like meaningful content, producing things that actually connect with and engage the audience that you want to reach. What does that look like?

3:02And how do you do it? Hopefully, I produce things on a somewhat regular basis that people feel reaches that bar. And I wanted to break down for you what I am doing. and hopefully it can inspire you to do something similar whenever you're writing for an audience. And I was inspired to talk about this today because a reader recently sent me a voice, really sent me a DM on LinkedIn and then I asked him to send me the same question as a voice memo so I could make a podcast out of it. So here's someone who aspires to connect with audiences and had a question about how I do it. Hey Jason, this is Ganesh Kesari.

3:47I'm a co-founder and chief decision scientist at Gramner. I contribute articles to Entrepreneur and Forbes on data and AI. I recently enjoyed reading your story on OBJ. You've humanized a celebrity and shown a spotlight on his entrepreneurial side. I really love your writing style and that's another reason I keep coming back to your stories. I'm working on improving my writing. Can you share one top-of-mind tip for writing an enduring article that really connects with the audience. Hey, thanks, Ganesh. I really appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate you going through the hassle of sending me a voice memo.

4:23And so what Ganesh is talking about there, he said he just read my OBJ profile. So that was a profile that I wrote a little while ago about Odell Beckham Jr., a very accomplished football player. And the story wasn't about football at all. And this right here is the starting point for the advice that I'm going to give you today, which was, I talked to that guy and I didn't ask him a single question about football, not one. And that was by design. In fact, when we were preparing for this story, when I was talking with OBJ's business advisor, business partner, really, a guy named Ajay, I said, I will not ask a single question about football.

5:09And the reason for that is because I know who my audience is. I write for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs do not play professional football. And therefore, I need to reach my audience where they are. And I need to make sure that when I sit down with OBJ, a guy primarily known for football, that we're having a conversation that is useful, relentlessly useful to my audience of entrepreneurs. Now, how do you do that? How do you bridge that gap? How do you not just do this when you're interviewing celebrities, which I realize most people are not doing. I get to do it from time to time, but I know most people don't.

5:52But whenever you are sitting down to write anything about anything, how do you make sure that it is useful to the audience? The first step is that You have to know who your audience is. You have to know what is relevant to them. And you have to make sure that every step that you take, every inquiry that you make is informed by that and only that. How do you actually put something together that's going to be meaningful? Well, I have a theory on that, and it's called bricks and mortar. And after the break, that is what I'm going to tell you. Looking for a rewarding, life-changing opportunity that enhances the lives of children in your community?

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7:54I talked to The Rock and I didn't ask him anything about acting in movies or wrestling. And the reason for that is number one, that's just what everybody asks these people. It's pretty boring. If you ask people something that everyone else asks them, you just get the same exact answers. And it's not useful. Maybe it's interesting if you happen to be interested in football or wrestling or comedy or whatever, but it's not useful for an audience. And so my starting point whenever I interview someone is always, what have they learned that my audience, my broad audience of entrepreneurs can learn from them?

8:32What is the connective thread between the person who I'm talking to and my audience? And that takes time to figure it out. When I interviewed Jimmy Fallon, for example, I went in with this hypothesis that what I was going to talk to him about was purpose and how to find who you are to other people. It was something that he clearly had to spend time doing as he had found his way in his own career. When I interviewed Bethany Frankel, a real housewife of real housewife fame, who went on to found Skinny Girl and a whole bunch of other very large brands, I talked to her about time management. Because again, most people are not going to do what Bethany Frankel does.

9:16But everybody has to juggle a lot in their own lives at whatever scale it is. And that's just what I do. I start with the question of what does this person know that other entrepreneurs would find useful? What is the thing that they spent time understanding that's broadly relevant? and that if I understand how they do it at a high level, other people, anybody, even people completely outside of their industry can find it really useful too. But again, like I said, that's just the starting point. Now what? How do you write it? How do you make sure that it connects with an audience? Let me tell you this.

10:02Okay, I'm just gonna assume that if you're listening to this, it's because you try to communicate something in some way, writing, video, podcasting, whatever it is. but maybe it's not connecting or it's not connecting as well as you would like it to. Maybe you're writing or speaking or sharing information and you're trying to reach the masses or a small group or just an audience of one, whatever. It doesn't matter. I have a solution that's useful in any of these contexts. I'd said it before. I'll dig into it now. It's called bricks and mortar. It is the single most important insight that I have had as a communicator.

10:36This idea of bricks and mortar will help you connect with an audience. It'll help you keep them engaged. It'll help you be more meaningful to them. And today, today, that is what I'm dedicating problem solvers to. But to appreciate it, we must first understand why reaching people is so hard in the first place and how to overcome it. All right. The next thing that I'm going to tell you, I actually said recently on problem solvers, but now you're going to hear it in a somewhat different context. It is about the first question that anyone asks of anything. Imagine a salesperson shows you a product, okay?

11:10What do you do? Likely, what you do is that you ask yourself a version of this question. You think, is this for me or is this not for me? Again, if you listen to Problem Solvers regularly, you will have heard that question recently because I was applying it to emails and to sales emails. and why people think that immediately when they get any kind of message from anybody, which is the reason why you have to anticipate this. Is this for me or is this not for me? I got this from a sales coach who told me that he instructs salespeople to anticipate this question and to answer it with the first words that they say.

11:49A salesperson must show immediately that yes, whatever they're selling is for you. And the insight stuck with me because I realized this isn't about sales at all. it's about everything. When you start a podcast like this one, you're asking, is this for me or is this not for me? When you browse the supermarket aisles and you look at a product, you think, is this for me or is it not for me? When you start a new TV show, you wonder the same thing. Is this for me or is it not for me? Let's call this our first question. People are always asking it, which means that as communicators, we must always answer it.

12:27But that's not all. Because here is really the key to writing great content. You have to answer it repeatedly throughout everything that you make. Imagine, for example, that your friend calls you up and says, you got to hear this story. Your first question now is easily answered because it's your friend. Your friend has called you. They have a story you love. And what's for you? Is this for me or is it not for me? Yes, for me. My friend has a story. They think I want to hear it. But now imagine that your friend launches into a long, rambling, completely unsatisfying story. We all have friends like this, right?

13:01At some point, you start to wonder, is this going anywhere? What is the point of this? In other words, it is not enough to just answer the first question once. If you want to hold someone's attention and connect with them, you must answer it repeatedly. Now, really internalize that. How do you communicate with anyone in a way in which you're constantly answering the first question. Is this for me? Is this not for me? Here, now, finally, we reach bricks and mortar. The more you think about your audience, the more you will develop a kind of healthy anxiety about them. Every time you speak or write, you will start to wonder, is my audience still with me?

13:44Do they see why this is valuable to them? Bricks and mortar is my way of controlling or answering that question through everything that I make. It is a visual metaphor. Bricks and mortar. Visual metaphor. It goes like this. The bricks are facts. They are things about you or about someone else, OBJ, whoever. They're whatever you're writing or talking about. Those are the bricks. The mortar is context. This is you addressing your audience, either directly or indirectly, to make the facts as relevant to them as possible. The best stories and the most powerful communications are not just about bricks.

14:24They're not just a matter of this happened, this happened, or here's a fact about this. Here's a fact about this. Here's a fact about that. No, what matters is how you assemble those bricks. The mortar holds everything together. It's what makes a brick useful. I've said that word a lot in this episode, useful. assembling all of those facts into a useful structure specifically designed to serve your audience. I will give you an example from something that I wrote. I mentioned Jimmy Fallon recently. I recently profiled Jimmy Fallon for Entrepreneur Magazine. On its face, this makes no sense. Jimmy is an entertainer.

15:03So what does he have to offer entrepreneurs? I gave you a little preview of the answer to this a moment ago. But when I was going into that room to talk with Jimmy, it was my job to figure that out. My job was to go in, sit down with Jimmy, learn a lot from Jimmy, but figure out what did he have to say? What did he know that would be relevant and helpful for entrepreneurs? That was the mission. And to see what I did, I'm going to zoom in on just a little section of the story that I wrote. So for context, Jimmy and I were talking about his early career. He had quit Saturday Night Live to pursue movies, but he wasn't very good at it.

15:42His movies totally bombed. And even worse, he didn't really seem to have a passion for movies. And during our interview, I asked Jimmy why he pursued that goal at all. And his answer was super interesting. So here's how I wrote it. This is just straight from the story. So I asked Fallon, if somebody had asked why that was your goal, would you have had an answer? He pauses. Three seconds of silence. No, he finally says. I'm trying to think, why would that be my goal? Maybe from all the books and articles that I'd read, the trajectory of someone famous from Saturday Night Live is to do movies. It's just the path.

16:18That's the end of his quote. Now, this is me. I'm writing in the magazine. I write, want to hear the opposite of a self-directed mission? To hear an entrepreneur's greatest trap? Four words right there. It's just the path. Not your path, simply the path, a path, some path, a clearing that other people make for their own purposes, not for yours. That is the path through an unimaginative life and away from the satisfaction of a risk taken. That was from the story. You catch what I did there? This was bricks and mortar in action. I was combining the facts of my conversation, the bricks, with the context specific to my audience, mortar, to look at it again.

17:00So there's some bricks here. So I ask Fallon, somebody asked why that was your goal. Would you have answered? He pauses. He says, no, I'm trying to think of why that would be my goal. I guess it's just the path, et cetera. All right. Then the mortar. Want to hear the opposite of a self-directed mission to hear an entrepreneur's greatest trap? Four words right there. It's just the path. And then I go on. Okay. My exchange with Jimmy was interesting. Me asking him, if somebody had asked why that was your goal and his answer, it was interesting. but its purpose was agnostic. That little exchange, that little fact, that brick, it could have been told to any audience for any purpose.

17:33It could have been a story about the entertainment industry. It could have been a parable about a career guide for comedians. So when I wrote that brick, that little moment, I needed to then add mortar. I needed to make that moment relevant to my audience. And the whole story, 3 ,000 words, it reads like that. Bricks mortar, bricks mortar. It's me telling a story and then using those facts to uniquely serve my audience's needs. And I do that in different ways, but I am always assuring them, yes, this is for you. I'm always making it relevant. Now, here's how you can do this. You do not have to write or speak exactly like I did in the Jimmy story.

18:14The point isn't to simply intersperse nods to your audience every few paragraphs. Instead, the point is to be relentlessly in service of your audience. to always be aware that people are reading or listening or watching or engaging because they are in some way seeking benefit for themselves. They expect what you write to be for them. So what do they want? To be entertained, challenged, informed, engaged? You need to know. You need to know the answer to that. When you think like this, you become more aware of what you're writing and saying right down to the sentence level. I do this all the time now, even in my conversations and emails.

18:57Let's say that I'm being interviewed on a podcast and someone asks me, how did your career begin years ago? Before I used bricks and mortar, I would have thought, oh, this podcaster is interested in me. And then I would have given a long, detailed answer about my early career. But now I think differently. Now I think, what does this audience want? If I'm being asked this question about my early career, it's probably because the podcast's audience cares about starting their careers. So now I give a few small details about my journey. Those are the bricks. And then I pivot into the lessons that I learned that are applicable to the listener, because those are the mortar.

19:35Because look, here's the thing. You might have the best stories in the world, the best insight, the best information, the best product, the best service, the best anything. But nobody will hear them if you don't answer their first question. If you stack a bunch of bricks on top of each other, all you've made is a wall that easily falls. Bricks need mortar. Facts need context. A story isn't good because of what's in it. A story is good because of how you tell it. And that means really it's good because you are aware of who you are telling it to. You are the thing that makes a story good. You and your ability to connect with the audience.

20:16Never, ever forget that. And that's our episode. I would love to hear what you think and maybe even about a problem that you solved. You can find me at my website, jasonfeifer.com. J-A-S-O-N-F-E-I-F-E-R.com. Also, I have some more useful stuff for you. I write a newsletter about how to future-proof yourself and become more adaptable and optimistic. I would love for you to sign up. It is at jasonpfeiffer.bulletin.com. Also, check out my other podcast. It's called Build for Tomorrow. In each episode, I take on some belief that we have that holds us back from progress and show you why it is not as bad as you think.

20:57Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media and comes out every Monday morning, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.