RSS 71: How to Become Unignorable: Katelyn Bourgoin on Owning One Idea and Building a Brand People Remember

0:03Does your experience with AI sound a little something like this? You've been prompting for 20 minutes. The output is polished, confident, and completely useless. That's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. HubSpot's AI works with your actual customer data, every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and you ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

0:34once in a while you'll scroll through your feed and you'll see something and you'll say gee i wish i came up with that these ideas are unignorable a concept that stands out and really kind of hits home for you all of the things that you wish you would have taken the step to just reiterate and share and communicate a little bit more than the competition that idea of owning an idea by telling a story over and over and over again is something that makes some people uncomfortable but makes the greats great. Some of the best communicators of all time have said the same thing over and over and over again until you believe that that idea was exclusively theirs.

1:18My next guest, Caitlin Burgoyne, has helped some of the most successful brands, marketers, creators, and individuals that you probably already follow on one of the various platforms do exactly that. Become unignorable in owning a single idea. This concept, this idea of owning an idea is something that I believe is key to establishing a long-term brand. A brand that doesn't just show up and vanish a few days later. When I think of some of the people who I have followed over the course of my career dating back to when I was in my teens through now, I can say with confidence that those people identified something that they represent, something that they believe in, and they were relentless at telling the story.

2:04And by doing so, they have been able to separate from the rest of the pack. Folks, if you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Ross Simmons Show.

2:26with the business. Caitlin, we go way back, back in the times of like early, early startups before this whole chaotic world was what it is. I am so excited to have you on the pod. Thanks for coming on. Caitlin, we've known each other for a long time. I'm going to go back in a time for a second. If there is something that you would give yourself as advice when we were first coming up in this game of digital marketing, trying to become unignorable? What advice do you wish somebody gave you, let's say what, 15 maybe years ago? Let's say 15. Oh my God. I love this question. So I think, I don't know if we've met yet, but prior to doing the tech company, I think we met through the startup community.

3:11I had had started an agency. I was growing that and I wanted to stop selling time for money. You know, that whole, there was It's a very popular phrase at the time, you know, figure out how to like, you know, stop selling time for money. And I thought about maybe doing a course. This is back in 2013. And I was like, you know what? That world is way too saturated. I can't do it. Like, there's just no space. I think I'll do something else. I'm going to do a tech company. How hard could that be? turns out really bleeping hard after you know pouring my life savings and every like dollar like you know every like stitch of energy I had into growing that company it didn't work out I kind of look back and then I ended up doing a media and education company that worked out pretty great and so I look back I'm like what would have Caitlin been what would my life be like today if instead of doing the you know BC back tech company playing on hard mode I would have done the course business.

4:07Like, you know, maybe 2013 wasn't such a bad time for that. So I guess I would say, check yourself. Like, you know, don't assume the doors are closed because ultimately, of course, I'm glad that I got to where I am now, but I think I was a little off on the timing of when courses would be dying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, the education game is one of those industries that has far from died. It's more alive than ever before. I think I see more books being published now on Amazon than ever before. There's more courses and course companies than ever before. It's a massive space. But for those who are listening that might be in a space that does seem a little bit crowded, I think your philosophy about being unignorable is super important.

4:53So tell me, what does it mean to be unignorable? Well, I think that anybody who's been following me for a long time can tell because you're a great poster child for that concept. But essentially, for a long time, it was about making great content, right? And that was hard to do. And you and I both came up at a time where you would sweat, you know, creating that content, you'd spend hours, if not days on the blog post, or then, you know, Twitter threads was a big thing. I remember one thread took me 13 hours to put together, including all the images and everything. And so for a long time, it was about just how do you, you know, share great content, content that really can motivate people that can like help them do their jobs better that, that, you know, that they love to consume.

5:36And that was kind of the benchmark. And now I think we're in kind of like phase two of that world where it's not enough just to do the great content, because great content, the kind of the bar for that has gone quite high. I think now it's really about becoming known for something, an idea that you own in the minds of the buyers, in the minds of your market. And I think you've been doing this for years. Like when I hear the word distribution, you are the person in my head because you have been yelling at people for years about how important distribution is. And so like you own that place in my mind.

6:10There's like a mental block for Ross Simmons when I hear distribution. And that's what I think it requires today is to make a compelling argument, one that's revelatory and changes the way people see their situation, and then to really double down and own that and create a lot of content, a lot of value around that idea. So like the way I look at it, the people who win today are the idea owners. They're the ones who own ideas in our mind. And that's where the bar is in terms of becoming unignorable individually. I love it. When it comes to owning an idea, is there any examples outside of me that you would point to and say like they have done this extremely well and this is the blueprint that they took to get there like is there anyone that stands out that listeners might be able to kind of study and learn from let's do a little game so i'm going to name a few ideas that are owned that have clear idea i'm just going to name the idea and i want you or the concept or um you know the associated words of this person i want you to tell me if you think you know who it is so i'll start with uh you know i'll start with somewhat maybe an easy one who do you think of when you hear the term boring businesses?

7:19Oh, that's Cody Sanchez. Mm-hmm. What about Atomic Habits? Oh, that's James Clear. Mm-hmm. What about Start With Why, an oldie but a goodie? Oh, Simon Sinek. I might be saying his name wrong, but yes. Yeah. Purple Cow. Does that one ring a bell? The OG Seth. That's right. And so the reason that all of, I was able to say just a couple of words, like with you with distribution, and you were able to immediately associate those with the person is because those people are the idea owners in your mind and what makes the words travel isn't the fact that purple cow is kind of cute sounding it's the underlying argument below it so i remember the first time i read purple cow as a brand new marketer and like it just like emblazoned in my brain i was like oh my god it's all about being different like it's not if you if you're not different you're not doing anything like i hadn't considered that concept the first time i read that book and it changed my perspective it was revelatory for me and that's what an ownable idea is it's basically a revelatory argument with a clear direction of like what to do once you once you have this aha moment it's like okay now that you've you've changed my mind tell me what to do next and that tell me what to do next when it's done really well and really profitable like moves them very easily to working with you whatever that looks like whether it's you know using distribution.io in your case In Cody's case, whether it's signing up for a cohort to learn how to buy a boring business.

8:45So I think that the best idea owners, they find the sticky language that makes their ideas spread. But it's not the words that are the powerful part. The words matter, but it's the argument underneath them. And that's the part that I think a lot of us aren't spending nearly enough time on. We're kind of creating content. We think about content and like pillars. You know, what are the content pillars? What are the topics that I want to talk about? But Cody can talk about hiring or, you know, HR or finance. She can talk about all of these different pillar topics, but they all ladder up to this one big compelling argument.

9:21And so I think that the best content creators are the ones who have a really revelatory argument and they commit to sharing it and they compress it into language that spreads. So that's that's what I think the big opportunity is for the future. and anybody who's in our world right now like you know the there's we're all scared right if things are changing fast it's exciting it's nerve-wracking but the thing you keep hearing is like distribution is the mode distribution is the mode and it's like yeah but like what is distribution right distribution is trust distribution is finding a way to get your message into somebody else into somebody else's like ears whether that be through you or through other people spreading it even better.

10:03And the way to get distribution now is to have something worth saying. And a lot of people are not spending enough time on that. How would you advise or coach someone to find the idea that they should own? So it's tricky. So like the way that we, so I've been doing this now with a number of clients because ultimately we had run, so I've had the unignorable challenge previously. Back in 2022, I started a personal branding cohort with the team at DemandCurve. And over 1900 people went through that many went on to become like dominant voices in their space again this is pre-ai pre-content becoming easy and the last exercise in that was to help people find what i call at the time their big idea and i look at it as kind of like a cherry on top right like you figure out like what's your version of boring businesses what's your version of solopreneurship like with justin welsh and you know some folks went on to find some and there was like really interesting results but like i really think that now it's more of a requirement than a nice to have, but it's not easy because what it takes is something that a lot of us don't spend a lot of time doing, which is really digging into the way that we do our work, our perspective on the work, our belief system, and then trying to figure out what's actually worth building around and how do we take what we want to say and match that to what our market needs to hear.

11:20And before we can sit down and come up with an idea for my clients. There's a lot of strategy work we do, like where's their business going? Are their offers going to be changing? Then we need to think about positioning. Okay, well, knowing what they're building and where it's going, how do we figure out the differentiator worth paying attention to? And then we can kind of get to building the argument. And so the way that I help people build their argument is essentially it starts with figuring out who the buyer is that comes from the positioning work. And then you have to kind of answer five questions, which is what is their aspiration, right?

11:52What are they trying to achieve? What's the problem? What's blocking them from getting there? Something they'll help you, they'll pay you to solve. What's your lens? And this is really important because a lot of people out there might want to copy what you've done with distribution. They might want to talk about it. Have they actually done the work? Do they have the credibility that you have of it? Do they have a presence on all of these different channels? Do they work with all these big brands? The lens that you bring to you like the idea is really important and the reason why an idea might spread for one person where somebody else can say the exact same thing and it gets ignored is because the messenger matters so you have to think about like the lens why should they believe you what is it that's interesting about your perspective on the problem then it's like the revelation that's like okay like what's once you identify that this problem exists what's your approach to solving it that's interesting and different.

12:43And then once they go, Oh my gosh, okay, you just like change my mind here. So now what can I do? That's the directive. So I have people build their argument by finding those pieces, starting with the buyer, and then building out what's their aspiration? What's the problem? What's your lens on this problem? Why are you credible? Why should we trust you? What's the revelation, the truth that they need to hear that changes their perspective? And now what can they do next? What's the directive? And we work on building those pieces out. And this is not sexy, market-facing message this isn't going to go on their home page they're probably never going to tweet about it in these exact words but it's to frame the argument and make them have conviction in it and for them to be able to see okay this is something that i can build a body of work around and that gives me an optionality that i can like use to sell my products or maybe even launch new ones and so it starts with figuring out the argument that's going to be central to everything else then we go off and do the fun stuff which is where we come up with the language and we write the narrative and we write these like sexy mantras that they're going to repeat all the time.

13:43That part is fun, but you can't just polish the words without a strong argument underneath. So we got to do that first. Right. Right. That's cool. I think what's interesting is like a lot of these philosophies, when I think of people who have done this approach really well, it's the best politicians of like, when I think of the most successful campaigns, politics aside i'm not going down the path of arguing this versus that i'm just saying a lot of the best politicians play this game really really well so it's interesting because if marketers and brands and personal brands can apply a similar methodology but in our lane of like playing the capital game then it can be super powerful so it's very interesting like i think there's probably lots of lessons to be learned from that world as well when we work on mantras with the clients i always say i'm like i don't i don't care about your politics i have my own opinions but you have to give it to him like donald trump is really good at mantras he's really flipping about it and i don't know if he's writing those himself he's i'm sure he's had a team of writers but like that man that man is good and he's good at repetition and i think as marketers we get bored of our own message so much sooner than our audience and we're always pivoting and some of the best brands have been saying the same thing forever like i love snickers like snickers is one of my favorite examples they've been using the you're not you and you're hungry which is a which was a revelatory thing like i remember the first time i saw it i was like like hangry that's a thing i didn't know it could be hangry i could be hangry and they've been using it for decades and they recently put up this new commercial about ai and i can't remember the premise but it was basically like a like the way that ai just gives you these like distorted crappy answers like obviously your ai is hungry that's hilarious that's brilliant but they've been finding a way to like you know continue with that idea and associate them being the satiating chocolate bar and everything else is candy but like they're kind of like a little deal and they've been doing it for decades and it works it does yeah so when it comes to be ignorable what you're building like folks want to learn how to apply this methodology do they just sign up for the newsletter is there ways to collaborate with you is this for creators only should brands be interested who do you want to kind of be unignorable?

16:01Love this question. So, you know, taking my own medicine, the first question in that, you know, the central argument that I help people build is like, who's the buyer? And in my case, I see a massive opportunity and helping entrepreneurs who sell their expertise become thought leaders, right? Because they already, like what they sell is their judgment. And they're also being massively disrupted by AI right now. So they have a real need to differentiate and stand out. And so I'm targeting specifically working with consultants, agency owners, strategists, that's the target customer for me. But that doesn't mean that you can't still get lots of value from learning from us.

16:38So if you're running a startup or, you know, a D2C brand, sign up for our newsletter at beignorable.com. And every week we put it in issue where we profile an expert and we kind of break down what their ownable idea is. We show how they were able to build it in public, what are some of the tactics they used. We haven't done your issue yet, but you're on the list. So you'll see your own name coming soon. And then when it comes to working with us directly, I have people apply when I do a new batch of clients. I'm very actively building the methodology because my belief is that our product is going to be the system of how we're able to help extract, shape and help people spread their ideas.

17:18I'm still figuring that out. This is a whole new, like I've done 12 clients so far. They're all pumped with the outcome, but I'm still figuring out how do I do this more predictably? Because right now there's still a lot of nuance and judgment. So if you're interested in potentially working together, I'd get on the email list. You'll find it when I open applications. That's the best way. Awesome. And I'll include a link to the Be Unignorable website directly in the show notes so folks can get access to it. I want to pivot, but before I pivot, I do want to ask you a question. So you've built up a pretty significant following, both on the email side, both on the follower side, LinkedIn X.

17:56You've been unignorable on a lot of different channels for a very long time. You've had some of the most viral tweets in business. Like you've done your thing. What is it that you have unlocked and understood that you would say a lot of folks haven't that you can share with us? What has allowed you to find a path to achieve this following and get people to truly, like you've got super fans. How did you go down this path of building that type of an experience online? I love this question. I mean, there's a couple answers. I would say number one, and it's very true, but it sounds a bit cliche. I just really, really obsess over biopsychology.

18:34psychology like i'm so fascinated by learning about all the different techniques like learning the copywriting how to apply this to writing i have like this like braid for pattern recognition i like seeing something that goes viral and being like breaking it down like oh like they use scarcity or like there's this loss aversion thing or like oh they're using like the pratfall effect so i like because i have spent time studying all of these different cognitive biases and heuristics i can then look at content and kind of extract it and go why did that work or why didn't it work it's also kind of a blessing and a curse because i know that a lot of my stuff i could be i could be i could create content that performs better than it does but i really like using content to explore my own thinking like build new frameworks and stuff so like i don't do that many kind of like inspirational posts or like you know like kind of like fluffier stuff that I know performs and I know why I perform and I enjoy consuming it too.

19:30It's tasty, but I don't create that much of that even though I know I should make more of it. It's something I need to actually push myself on. But I would say that was the thing. It was just becoming super nerdy about understanding behavior and then applying those lessons to content and then looking at content my own and other people's and going, why do I think that worked? Let me break it down. Let me reverse engineer it and then let me try something similar with my next piece of content. So that's why I suggest people do it. It's so much easier now with AI too. That's true. That's true. On the AI point, like how would you apply AI if you're like, when we first got into this game, there was no AI.

20:07So we had to read the books of all of the marketing psychology books and study buyer's behavior, all of that stuff. Now AI exists. How do you recommend people use AI to get closer to understanding buyer psychology? What a good hook is. the pattern interruptions, like what's your advice for the role that AI plays today in the mix of creating that idea that is unignorable and putting out content? What's your recommendation to folks? Where does it stop? Where is a human and where does AI fill the gap very well? I think my answer is going to be very biased from my own experience, but I guess I would say like, I don't remember what it's like not to know this stuff before AI, because I learned a lot, most of it before AI.

20:50And what I would say is that like, I have a really hard time. There's sometimes I'll want to go deep on somebody's body of work and I'll be like, tell me everything about this person. Like give me the summary and I'll get the AI summary. I don't remember any of that. Like I still, if I want to retain something, I'm going to read a book or I'm going to listen to a podcast of somebody talking about that because like, that's how I remember it. So I'd say that when it comes to like learning the principles, I don't think there's a shortcut for that. I think you can get the summary. I think you can pull out those, but I don't think you'll remember them or understand how to apply them.

21:22if you don't actually put the cognitive friction in putting that information in your brain. So I'd say still go out and read the great books, still go out and like, listen to the podcast of like experts talk about their thing. But when it comes to using AI for once you kind of know what those things are, that's when you have the pattern recognition to be able to look at an AI output and say, is this good or not? So like I built my own, I call it like a Claude co-writer. And it's based on all of my, it's my approach to creating content. It's very kind of, it interviews me and I kind of explain the idea of what I want to create.

21:53It will help me create that first draft. It's absolutely made me faster, but it's, I don't, I don't use Claude for the idea. I use Claude for the first draft. And I always have loved responding to a first draft. I'm a better editor than I am a writer. But at the same time, I recognize that the more that I'm relying on it, the weaker my own ability comes to not use it. So I'm kind of conscious about it. Like I try to like stay in the gym like i try to give myself time where i'll just like give myself portions of the day where i'm like i'm not touching a guy at all during this window i'm just going to use this because i don't want this to get lazy let's see if i still got it yeah exactly so i'd say that for people who are coming up now who haven't been spending you know the last decade doing this like we have don't shortcut yourself out of actually gathering those skills because they're still really, really valuable.

22:45And you don't have the judgment until you develop those skills. Like you can't look at something and know if it's good. And so you need to develop that judgment and you have to do it the hard way. Right. Speaking about the hard way, you've had some businesses that have thrived. You've had some businesses that have shut down bankruptcy, played the hard game with the VC side, et cetera. Can you give me a rundown on what your journey has been like? So for some listeners who might not be familiar, like, give me a bit of a rundown on how you were able to overcome. Do you remember how you kind of got over some of these hurdles and what mindsets you were in to be able to push through?

23:25What was that all like? One thing I'd say is that any of the listeners that are running online businesses, whether that be a service-based business, whether it be media or education or tech startup, like, I think we all have this aspiration that the grass is always greener and that one of them is going to be easier than the other. And I can promise you, having done all of them now, that they're all hard. They're all hard in their own ways. I would say that my biggest learning is like, what is the one where you have a distinct unfair advantage, right? Like, I love using content to think. I love using writing as a way to like figure out my ideas to kind of like codify my thinking.

24:02And so for me, doing a media company leads to my unfair advantages. I really love thinking through creating content. Now, if I'm somebody who would much rather sit down and code and build a product, then like that's not going to be – and the thought of actually having to write shit down or like show up on like video or do a podcast is like completely like foreign and like not interesting to me, then you should probably not do a media company, right? So I'd say that like my biggest learning from trying to do all of the things was that I was often there's this concept called mimetic desire where we don't really know what to want.

24:37So we look at what it seems like other people want and then we try to do that thing. And so you chase the solopreneur business, you try to build an extra unicorn startup or you try to buy a laundromat and go the boring business route. I think for all of us, it'd be a lot better if we actually just spent some time, figure out what we actually want. and I did this a couple of years ago I took the summer off I was feeling really burned out and this is when I read the book it's called Wanting by Luke Burgess and it's about my medic desire great read for anybody who's at this kind of crossroads or transition in their career or business and it really helped me to sit down like clarify what I want and now I feel like I'm very deliberately building towards that like one thing I always wanted and I figured that out after my tech startup is I really wanted to have a partner in business and I wanted that of course so I wanted that person like that ride or die and yet i've been done that startup for years i still didn't have that and i was like why have i kept putting this off so like right now my biggest priority is finding that and i'd say the lesson is like figure out what you want and don't let the kind of like sexiness of the new like tempt you because it's all hard and nothing new is going to be easier necessarily it just seems that in the moment when you're in the like in the sludge That's fair.

25:52When you're in the sludge, I know it's easy for people to say, oh, I'll just work a little bit harder and keep pushing. I know I can just, I can suck it up. I don't have to pay myself. I'm just going to grind it out for a few more months and keep going and keep going. What advice would you give a 25, 26 year old who may be on a path and they're like, I'm just going to keep pushing, even though I don't have product market fit, even though I'm not like seeing all the signals, I'm just going to grind it out. What's your advice to them? I love that you gave the context of the 25 to 26 year old because my advice would be different.

26:25I think we've talked about this before. Like, I think there are seasons for hustle and there are seasons for like flow. And I'm glad that I worked my ass off in my 20s. I know that there's this whole movement now where people are like, you know, they're against like hustle culture. Hustling is good. Hustling is formative. It shapes you. I mean, you're building something and you have no experience and no pattern recognition yet. No network. you have to work your ass off and if anybody's trying to sell you on a dream where you're not going to do that i hope that that turns works out for you but i can tell you it's not been the case you're most of the successful people i know you have to work your ass off so i'd say that work your ass off is absolutely good advice the question is at what right and that was you and you're saying if there's somebody who's struggling they don't have product market fit like i was in that exact position it was like this thing is not working and i remember for me again going back to like mimetic desire.

27:20I thought I was going to build the next unicorn startup. I was doing Tony Shays tech accelerator in Las Vegas. And I was touring Zappos. Zappos had been his company, sold it to Amazon for a couple of billion. And I'm touring Zappos. They've got 500 employees and I had a panic attack. And I was like, Oh my God, like if I actually built my tech company to be the next LinkedIn for women, which is what Inc said we were building, I'm going to way more than 500 employees this idea horrified me like i was like this isn't what i want and i had this like company moment where i was like i've spent three years raising money working my ass off striving towards this thing and now i'm seeing what this thing might look like if i actually achieved it i don't want that at all so i would say if you're in that moment where it's not working check with yourself and be like do i really want this because if you really want to keep pushing Try to figure it out.

28:12Like there's nothing wrong with stopping something that's not working and trying something new. But most people stop before they know if it wasn't going to work. But if you're doing something that even if you win, it's not the right thing, don't do that. But you got to figure out what you want, right? Yeah, 100%. So you've built more businesses since then. You've gone on, continued to grow, build new businesses. What's different now? like what did you do differently to say this path is actually the right path for me what self-work did you have to do to get there and what can people learn from it yeah that's i love this question and like ultimately i think it comes down to i've done enough to know that the mirage of easier is a mirage so that helps when i like attempted to be like oh this thing's like i should switch because this might be easier i remind myself no it's not like you've tried that You've chased things that might be easier.

29:05So I am aware. I have that self-awareness now from having made that same mistake more than once. And I would say that I've recognized I'm more confident in the things that I'm good at. And because I'm aware of what I'm good at, I can recognize when I should continue with something. Because it's like, yeah, no, I can't figure this out. This is in my wheelhouse versus where something's hard. And I'm like, maybe this is just like, you know, maybe I should just give up. So I'd say getting clear on like what I'm good at, but that takes time too, because like you won't know if you're good at something until you do it.

29:39And even if you do it and you're great at it, you might not love it. And so there's, there's a lot of making mistakes and learning and like, you're never failing as long as you learned a valuable lesson. I know that sounds really cliche, but I think it's really true.

29:57Seven Day Weekend is brought to you by the HubSwap Podcast Network. the audio destination for business professionals. Self-proclaimed anti-workaholic, Laura Anderson brings together this podcast and it's something that you really should check out. It's a podcast where people are going to learn the ins and outs of business, finance, side hustle, and more. In this podcast, Laura brings to life some of the brightest guests who have started their own business from the comfort of their own home to create businesses that generally read anywhere from 10 to 20 to 30K a month. This is a podcast that anybody who doesn't want to get caught up in the corporate race, the rat race, if you will, should definitely check out.

30:34If you're maybe thinking about how you can use a side hustle to escape at your nine to five, this podcast might be for you. Laura brings in guests and also delivers authentic and real conversations into your earphones based off of lived experience. If you want to live your own seven day weekend, then this is a podcast that you won't want to miss. Listen to the seven day weekend wherever you get your podcasts.

31:02yeah no i like it let's go back to this idea of being unignorable because i think it connects back to this so if i am someone who wants success i know that i want to work for myself i know that i want to be self-employed i want to be a thought leader i want to contribute to the industry but i don't actually have any thoughts worth leading yet nothing that i've done is like that world changing. Am I the right person to try to figure out how to be unignorable or do I need to put reps in or do I need to put years in to actually get to a point where I can own an idea? People aren't going to like this answer.

31:39I think that there's in many cases, the better bet is to go off and to not like, when you look at like, when it comes to breaking through online, a lot of the folks that break through have already done the reps. They've already got their bonafis they've already got their proof so when they show up and they start creating content for the first time like you know alex hermosi right like alex hermosi could start off by saying you know i can help you create a hundred million dollar offer because he'd done it like he built a company up to 50 million dollars sold it for 50 million dollars he could legitimately say that so people are going to pay attention i'd say that there's real truth in what's called the messenger effect which is who says something you know often matters more than what's being said so i'd say if you've done nothing yet, don't waste your time trying to create content, go out and do some stuff.

32:25And while you're doing it, start documenting it, right? Start explaining, start sharing your journey. And ultimately, though, it's hard to be both doing and documenting. And so if you want, if you're in the phase where like, you're just going to go hard at the doing, and then you can come out of that. And you'll have all these war stories, and you'll have all these like wins, and you'll have this great network. So I think there's this real push for young people, they They think that they all want to be an influencer and a thought leader. If you honestly are just learning about your industry and you're just kind of getting started, maybe focus on going off and getting some reps in and then come back to building your thought leadership.

33:02That being said, there are plenty of great people who have had no experience and were able to start creating content. Maybe a channel was new or there was like this particular format that they got really good at and they exploded. it. And they have this amazing life now because they got in early in the right time in an opportunity. So that can happen too. So you can take my advice, you can leave it. But what I'd say is that it's easier when you have the bona fides. And I think that the sad thing is you've got all of these people that are our age and older, who have 20 years in their industry, they've never tried to think about creating content, they've never like thought about writing a LinkedIn post, and they're terrified to do it.

33:41And they see all these young people on there who are like noisy and often, you know, have these strong opinions that are actually kind of wrong and lack nuance but like those people are new to the industry and they're like how are they growing so fast and how are they getting so much attention and i'm like you have all of the stuff in your head like you just need to start sharing it so on the other side of this you know there's the 25 year olds like do your shit go out there get your reps like work hard it's worth it and then i'd say to like the 45 year olds like stop start thinking in public start doing it scary but you have so much value and like if you don't want to be frustrated when you see all these people with like way less pedigree blowing up start talking start showing up but caitlin i only have two likes i did it no one's sharing it no one's engaging like what do you say to the folks who post five times and then they're like it's not working yeah i'd take it over your ego right because like at the end of the day, a lot of things that are worth doing are compound very slowly.

34:43And that's why when I think about the ownable idea, I do think about it as the opportunity for like building compound authority, because like, it's gonna compound really slowly. And then when it starts when it takes off, it'll just explode. And so it's one of those things where you can keep going at it for a long period of time. That's why I really do believe that your first goal with content creation should be using it as a thinking tool because if you actually enjoy the process of doing it it helps you to clarify your thinking it helps you to kind of like create frameworks or things you're going to use in your own business anyway and you look at it as the thinking as the primary benefit and the audience as the second like benefit then you're going to keep doing it for me i really enjoyed writing like i started on twitter it was not hard to come up with 280 characters like it's not you know Twitter is still a great place to start.

35:34You can start on Substack and write notes there. I started with a small format that was manageable and I used it as a way to pressure test my thinking. I remember tweeting years ago and somebody that was another B2B thought leader shared it and was like, most of the things that I write are just notes to myself. They might sound like advice to others, but really it's just like note to self. Remember that thing that you know. And so use it as a note to self because when we, as humans, we love being coherent with what we've said in the past. So there's something that you want to be doing and you're giving that advice to others.

36:10Your chances of you actually doing it really increase. So use it for a note to self. Use it to clarify your own thinking and let the audience and the massive opportunities that can come from doing it right be a second order benefit. And they are, and it can change your life. I mean, it changed my life. I don't know what you brought. Changed my life. A hundred percent. Yeah. let's have some fun for a second. Let's pretend that I want to be, I'm not Ross. I'm a different person. I'm 40. I'm feeling like I want to break into the world of, let's say a world that I'm not in paid. I want to be known for paid.

36:43I want to build my reputation in that space. What advice would you give me or what are the steps that you would suggest to someone practically to be known in a year for a concept? Or is that too short? Is this a five-year game? In a year, can I get known for paid if I wanted to? And if so, how do I do it? So let's assume that you, even though you're not Ross, let's assume that you have a lot of experience in paid. Because otherwise, it's probably not the thing you should talk about. Yeah, probably not the thing you should talk about otherwise. But I'd say that the first thing that I like to do with my clients too is I like to think about there's going to be two outcomes here.

37:18First outcome is going to be you're going to have way better messaging. and so like that's going to pay off right away and secondly is the content piece that's going to come later right so initially like i we're most of us because we've been in the work we don't often get to spend that much time thinking about the way we think about the work you've been really smart you've been speaking for years so you've got you kind of were forced in this rhythm of thinking about your work so i'd say the first thing is find a way to do this with a thinking partner probably that isn't ai because ai is like you know a good thinking partner for some stuff but not so great for others but like a lot of the work that we do with people at unignorables we help them to come like overcome what i call like the experts paradox like oftentimes our thinking the stuff that's really brilliant we take for granted because it's just so obvious to us and so we think why would anybody else want to hear this like this is obvious but i bet you if you're in paid and you're not just trying to build an audience of other paid experts you probably have some insights that might be to other paid experts and mind-blowing to your target clients right and so I'd say the first part is like really kind of like digging into your own thinking on the topic and trying to understand what I call again like that revelatory piece I don't like to say contrarian because I feel like contrarian is about being different than what's the status quo revelatory is about change how your audience perceives the thing so start thinking through and like what do you think differently what's your approach like a lot of times the actual way that you do the work has these like hidden brilliance that if you were to actually share that and talk about that, it would blow people's minds.

38:52Right. So focus on figuring out what it is that you are already seeing, doing, or believing that is unique and valuable to the audience that you want to serve and then figure out what's the argument here. How do I shape this thing that I do and how do I make it valuable to them? A great example of this, some of your listeners might know, is the team at Fletch PMM. I'm not sure if you know those guys, but like they do positioning and homepage messaging. And I remember the first time that I saw, I think it was Anthony, had posted about this concept of like, no, don't sell benefits. Tell people what your thing does.

39:32Because as marketers, there was this very common phrase, which is like, you know, sell benefits, not features. And he's like, this is leading so many software companies arrive because you get to their website and you have no fucking clue what the thing does like be specific explain the use case tell us what it is and i remember reading that and being like yeah he's right but like when you hear it you go oh i hadn't really thought about it that way and that's the regulatory thing and then it kind of shifts the way you approach things and yeah if you're a pair of sneakers everyone knows what a sneaker is sell the benefit nobody knows what your new weird ai agent thing is so you have to be specific and so look for the ways that you you know might disagree with the industry look for the ways that you work that are different than what might be common in your space and then figure out how to take those and shape them in a way that gets your buyer their outcome because using the anthony example like all of their prospective clients were people who are running sas companies looking to have better messaging and positioning and so if they're all following the same kind of damaged advice and they're trying to sell the benefit and they're just confusing the hell out of people who they work hard to get to their website then it's in their best interest to want to pay attention to this revelatory thing so you've got to take what you believe in the way that you do things differently and then you've got to frame it into a way that makes it aspirational to your audience similar to what i've done with like with ownable ideas like everybody wants to have a personal brand now and i feel like personal brand has become this big buzzword but like at the end of the day what's actually the atomic unit of a personal brand right it's like the thing that you're known for what if you just focused on that and like got that right would everything else you do downstream be so much better yes right and so why don't we spend more time there yeah do you think like in that example where i'm the paid person to be known for something, do I need to just focus on one topic only and just like stay there?

41:29So let's say we got to this idea of, okay, we're going to talk about bottom of funnel ads is all that matters or something. And then that becomes my story 365 days a year. And I have to put up a post with that every single day. Like what does it actually look like in terms of my story being put out there? I love this question. Cause at the end of the day, again, like I don't think of it in terms of topics. I think of it in terms of arguments. So maybe your big argument is this as this paid person is that i remember who was the guy ugly ads guy i don't know who he was but i don't remember he came up with this concept like all of these brands were doing these beautiful well highly produced ads right and he his argument was make ugly ads he's like make it look like something that's native to the feed that was mind-blowing to people And they're like, oh, my God, I'm spending so much on my agency.

42:20And I can just take a post-it and write a note on it and take a picture of my product. And that's going to convert better. And lo and behold, it did. Right. So like that concept that he became known for, the argument was make ugly ads. The like theory behind it was that anything that looks like an ad blends into the feed. People are looking for things that are organic are going to stand out. There's a whole lot of logic behind it. So that was his way of taking one concept, one argument, and imagine all the ways that he can create content around this, right? Like so much versatility. So it's not necessarily about the topic.

42:55It's not about like bottom of funnel specific. It's probably, it's about finding that bigger argument that gives you a foundation to build on. Very cool. Does the format matter? Like in today's day and age, is it video? Is it image? Is it text? Do I have to pick one and choose? should I have a variety like I've seen everything from flow charts on your account to visuals and infographics like how do I pick what to do if you're like you and I and like you know and like you have a bigger team like I have just like myself and a VA at this point like then I would say pick the format that you can actually produce consistently and that you enjoy right so for some people for me that's writing I'm good at short form writing that's like really my strength like so i do a lot of that i should be building an audience on instagram i could take all of my viral tweets and turn those into images and probably build on there i hate instagram i spend no time on there like i find it very performative and so like for me i'm not over there like and so i say when it comes to format what are you good at what do you like to consume going back to james clear from atomic habits like if you want to build a habit make it pleasurable well guess what you're gonna be more likely to do something you like to do than something you don't do so even though I know I should do video even though I know I should be posting on Instagram and eventually maybe will and I've been saying this for like five years like I just don't like it so I so I focus on the written channels that I enjoy so I'd say format comes down there's definitely moments in every channel where there's like a meta format and if you break through like we had a few people go through unignorable who really got a huge boost because they were early on LinkedIn with carousels.

44:37And like that was like formative to their audience. Like one of our alumni, Eric Partaker, he's got like 1.4 million followers on LinkedIn. He's like one of the top hundred biggest accounts. He got on carousels early and he did them really well and it was meaningful to him. But I bet you he also liked it. So like find the thing you like. Yeah, no, that's fair. Let's go back into time again. What would someone need to know about the 12-year-old spending their birthday at a women's shelter to understand about your journey and where you are today? I think that, I don't know, I think we probably have some of this in common.

45:17Like, I don't think anybody ever expected me to necessarily be successful, right? Like I didn't, I didn't expect myself to be successful. I didn't come up as like the top academic in my school or anything like that. Like school was like not hard, but I wasn't great and I was very average. which I came from a poor single mom. Like, you know, we were trying to figure stuff out. Like, I think that there are formative experiences that happen to a lot of high achievers in life that make them more likely to just have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. And then when they find business, they just pour themselves into it in a way of like, maybe it's a bit of escapism.

45:53Maybe it's a bit of like, you know, you guys didn't know how good I could be. Let me show everyone. And so I would say like, find that thing in you. that like you know that you can leverage as positive fuel and don't have expectations for yourself that match with people around you because nobody knows what you're capable of like you know you can be capable of so much more than anybody will ever believe so you've got to be your number one faith believer first but then find whatever it is that you can use as that fire and like push it but then also realize that you can burn out that way so yeah it's about it who said it there was a quote that was uh shared quite a bit a few years back uh chips on shoulders put chips in pockets yeah yeah i think it's so true it's like there's always something about those who strive but if they at the end of the day came from a place of i need to prove something it just like fundamentally um shifts their approach to hurdles obstacles i know for me all the time for a very long time and it was probably unhealthy but i would think of with intention whenever i got into a tough problem i would think of all of the people who doted me who said no who said i would never be able to get into university all that stuff i was like okay i'm gonna bring all that baggage with me and that's gonna allow me to win yeah um yeah there's a study that they did on that there's something from psycho psychology it's i'm gonna i'm gonna forget Oh, aces.

47:22So there's something like we heard of an ace, an adverse childhood event. So adverse childhood events could be things like growing up poor, could be abuse. It could be all these horrible, adverse things that happened to us in childhood. But they looked at all of these top Olympians or top entrepreneurs, and they basically evaluated them on how many aces did they have? How many adverse childhood events did they have? And it turns out that people that had a lot of aces also often could go and go on to become really, really successful. Or, and this is the sad part, it's very polarizing, or really, really struggle.

47:57You know, they become addicts and they go the other way. And so, like, you know, if somebody is listening to this right now and you feel kind of angry at the world and you didn't get, like, you know, doled a fair share of opportunities. The fact that you listen to this, for one, shows you're absolutely on the right path. Because, like, you are trying to better yourself. you're not being a victim to the circumstances that you were brought up in. But also just know that that can be fuel. I remember when I ended up going bankrupt after my tech startup, when I was going through that process, one of the things that gave me solace was there was a stat that I read.

48:30I don't even know if it's true, but it was really helpful, which was that the average millionaire had a bankruptcy. And I remember reading that and being like, okay, that's okay. I'm on the way. And guess what? Yeah. Within a few years of my bankruptcy, I became a millionaire. That's awesome. I love it. It's like nobody knows what somebody is capable of. And you don't even know until you really push yourself and apply yourself. 100%. If the old Caitlin saw you now, would this be what she expected? Hell no. No? It's still surprising to me sometimes. You know, I still run into people from like, you know, junior high.

49:12And like, I think that in my mind, I still see myself the way that I think that they probably perceived me then. Like nobody thought I was going to be a winner, nor did I. But I think I had enough aces that once I found business and I realized, oh, I like this, I just went all in. And I've now done the self-work to recognize that and be like, that was a good thing. But it also can, again, it can burn you out. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Is there a path in which you could give guidance to anyone who might be in a tough situation back home, et cetera, who, if you were to kind of talk to a young person who might be having a lot of those aces, what would be your advice to them if they wanted to not go down a certain path, but instead follow the positive path and come under this thing?

49:57Okay. What would be your guidance to them? I would say find your obsession that is, has positive benefits, right? Because like before I started business, I also partied a lot. I was doing drugs. I was drinking all the time. Like I was numbing myself and then I found business and business is another way to numb yourself. You can become, you can go into the grind, you can hustle hard, but like it was way better numbing agent than getting drunk all the time. So like find the thing that becomes is your obsession that actually is a positive thing for some people i remember uh i can't remember who it was they were talking about they're like the world's number one gamer or something and they make millions of dollars being a gamer and they're like you know people never thought i'd become anything because i was so into gaming but it's like you know what they obviously showed them all wrong so find your thing because like at the end of the day too i think that we're and to get there try more things because there was i was not open to trying a lot of this i to do one business course in university I had no interest I didn't see myself as somebody who would be interested in business and so like it wasn't until I did an English degree right like and then you graduate and you're like well what am I going to do now I've got a big debt but I didn't think of myself as somebody who'd be interested in business so I didn't try enough things I had this like very narrow perception of who I was so I'd say like if you don't know what your obsession is which probably a lot of people who are listening that are in the earlier stages of their life won't try stuff because they're like that's how you're gonna find it I was so lucky because I was working at a restaurant and I had this great boss and I don't I didn't realize at the time until reflecting years later how influential she was on me because she was 28 years old had opened a restaurant on her own just such a badass and she had saw that I did like some creative writing on Facebook and she saw me interacting with the customer and she was like you know you're good at writing you're really good with people like you should do PR and I was like that sounds really interesting and then i like went home and immediately googled what is pr because i had never heard of it before and then i was like oh that's cool maybe i would like that and then i ended up going to the nfcc and doing like the advanced diploma in pr and like fell in love with marketing like this like little element of pr that was actually this little bit and i worked at an agency and i was like oh my god i found this thing for not one comment from this person it was like a throwaway comment for them i would have never found that because it came from her and i respected her i was like you know i was like oh she thinks i could be good at this maybe i should give it a try so i'd say that like seek people in your life that you know believe in you more than you believe in yourself potentially and be willing to try things and be bad at them because you yeah that's how you find the thing you become obsessed with and you have to kind of become obsessed with something for you to really be super successful like all the most successful people are obsessed like at least they start that way yeah i've been obsessed with marketing for a very long time Yeah.

52:48We're so lucky we found our thing, right? A hundred percent. No, it's true. Caitlin, I am thrilled, honored, proud of you. Love seeing you win. It's been absolutely a great long-term friendship and I continue to cheer and root for you from the sidelines, but I love what you've built. Love all of the value that you provide the marketing community, but also Halifax, Nova Scotia, the East coast of Canada. You represent the Canadians very well. And we're all super proud that you're from here. So thank you so much for all you do. If folks want to learn more about Caitlin, be unignorable.com. Where else can folks go if they want to learn more about you in Canada?

53:26Most active right now on LinkedIn and X, and I'm trying to be more active on Substack. I'm writing many books there. So that's the, that's the new part. I will drop a link to the Substack as well in the show notes. Caitlin, absolute pleasure. As always, I'll see you on the internet. Thanks for coming. Thank you.