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00:00:01
Blaise Lucey
72 Plays1 day ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Blaise Lucey.
To keep up with or connect with Blaise:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaise-lucey-7ba50825/
✨ Substack: https://litverse.substack.com/about
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
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Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Career Transitions and Insights
00:00:00
Speaker
For some reason, i think when prepping these questions, I don't know if you remember, but once we were, it was when you were working at Brafton and we're on the train, like we bumped into each other, either going or coming from the office and you were talking about SEO and i feel like you were just spewing job search advice, but it was like good advice. And I think, was there a while when you were in Boston, but you weren't at Brafton anymore?
00:00:30
Speaker
I was in Boston, working out of Boston for four years before i moved to New York. What was the name of that place you were at? I had three different jobs, actually. So from Brafton, i went to Constant Contact.
00:00:41
Speaker
Constant Yeah. And then I went to another agency, actually, called March Communications, but that was more PR and content. Yeah, I know March still. They were big. They got acquired actually by a bigger agency. They they attracted a lot of Brafton people because they were trying to start their own content marketing efforts when that was still the hot new thing.
00:01:00
Speaker
Do you know who acquired them? I want to say it was Weber Shandwick, if that's what it's called, but it was a bigger comms agency. All right, Blaze.
Role and Insights at Silverpush
00:01:09
Speaker
So for folks who don't know you, who are you and what do you do?
00:01:13
Speaker
First of all, thanks for having me on content people. i've it It's just been so great to watch you build out this type of platform and listen to people's stories. um My name is Blaise Lucy. I'm currently the senior director of marketing at Silverpush and we do contextual video advertising um primarily on YouTube, but also across all online video and other display formats.
00:01:36
Speaker
So A lot of things come down to data and advertising technology, and we're going the opposite way in a way of targeting with context as well. It's been a pretty interesting ride so far. That's super interesting. When you say targeting with context, how would you describe that? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think the funniest thing is it's almost the opposite of the way we think of advertising sometimes, because when you think about ads, you think about, okay, demographic and audience, and that's it.
00:02:03
Speaker
Basic stuff. With something like YouTube, what ends up happening is a lot of examples are with influencers. So you could be trying to target a very famous influencer or podcast host, and so you're specifically talking about health or something.
00:02:18
Speaker
The guy might have a few episodes related to health that's about losing weight or quitting smoking. And then he might have some type of rants about conspiracies that are about health that are actually not good for your brand and not accurate.
00:02:31
Speaker
And you have to figure out with technology and context what's going on in those videos. So you're saying, okay, now he's talking about how the government is putting bugs in our food. That's probably not the health content we want our ad next to.
00:02:44
Speaker
Okay. About actually healthy eating, then this brand that's trying to be aligned with healthy eating tips, that might be something else. A lot of it also comes down to the audience's intent when they're looking at stuff. Right now we're just running a campaign with an anti-smoking product, right?
00:03:00
Speaker
And you can't necessarily target people by demographic who are trying to quit smoking.
Career Journey and Skills Development
00:03:04
Speaker
So a lot of it comes down to what they're watching and the contextual signals within those videos. And so as they're journeying, the algorithm will detect what they're trying to watch. And I think about this with YouTube a lot because I like to watch old grunge videos, right? And Woodstock 99 concerts, but then I'll get an ad for B2B software or something. And so while that's relevant to my demographic, it's not relevant to me in the moment.
00:03:28
Speaker
That's super interesting. I think Molly McPherson is her name. She's Boston based. She's, i think she got a huge on talk, but she does like crisis communications. And she was doing a long episode about the Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Justin Baldoni drama.
00:03:45
Speaker
And so it's negative on Ryan Reynolds. And she was saying that all of her subscribers were saying they were getting Mint Mobile ads with Ryan Reynolds in it that they had before her episode. And she I was like, oh it's a mismatch. Yes, Ryan Reynolds is mentioned, but it's a podcast slamming Ryan Reynolds. And now he's in the ad.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly Cause what the AI does a lot is look at the transcript, even a content people transcript, right? You look at that and then AI will learn what the sentiment is, for example, yeah and then it'll match a bunch of other signals and factors. And then yeah, for that one, it'd be like, oh, Ryan Reynolds is coming off as a villain. Maybe we won't put him in this thing.
00:04:21
Speaker
But if you're talking about a keyword like Ryan Reynolds, then it will actually get delivered to that area. Speaking of keywords, can you give me a quick version of your career journey? You've worked at so many cool places. You have so much awesome experience.
00:04:38
Speaker
You and I met when we were both working at Brafton forever ago, like 2010. Was that when you started at Brafton? yeah So like how from, yeah, like from college onwards, tell us all about your career journey.
00:04:51
Speaker
You never have the career you think you're going to have, especially when you're thinking about what's happening when you're at college, because you don't even know. i remember all I wanted to do was write.
00:05:02
Speaker
So I was thinking either a journalist or English teacher. And then I would try to write these creative stories about people with jobs, but I had no concept of what people were doing necessarily. So the characters were always teachers or journalists. That happens a lot. Or professors. um Right around 2010, journalism was tough. it was a tough market.
00:05:20
Speaker
There was the recession. And so i was just spamming resumes more or less. I think Brafton was the only place I got an interview out of 150 applications. Really? Yeah, only place. And I had randomly started writing stuff for one website that was trying to figure out keywords as a side project during my senior year of college.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah. And so maybe that got me in the doorway. I definitely could have been an English major thing. I was just desperate for anything. once you Once I got into the rhythm at Braft, then it was still just writing, right? So we were essentially doing all the writing I could possibly want every day and learning about all these different industries. My specialties were retirement homes, nursing homes, AARP, but then you'd also have stuff like Amish fireplaces.
00:06:05
Speaker
oh my God, this is bringing back memories. Yeah. And I think it's easy to be cynical about something like that. I think I was in in at the time and even because you know what it is.
00:06:17
Speaker
But the skill set that you develop in your early jobs becomes almost your foundation for the rest of everything you do. And Brafton's velocity and the speed you had to turn stuff over, and not only that, actually research and and put the information together structurally,
00:06:33
Speaker
almost is still the most valuable thing I've been, I bring to companies even now. that's my shout out to Brafton in my rose colored glasses, like retrospective history, but it is like the number one skill I still have. And it's still just writing. So navigating that and making it relevant in today's digital world
Strategies in Content Marketing
00:06:50
Speaker
always just comes down to, can you tell a story about anything?
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. No, that makes sense. So for folks listening who don't know Brafton, especially back in the day 2010, Blaze and I both worked there and it was based like 2010, the product was keyword rich copy.
00:07:06
Speaker
We would write a ton of it. It would go mostly on the back pages of client websites and it would at that time help and significantly help them with rankings because that was Google.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I feel like ah the quotas were wild. It was like 4,000 words a day per writer. What I remember was like about eight to 10 articles a day. And you had to have two, at least two sources. Three was better.
00:07:30
Speaker
And it was always trying to game the Google News. Like the big thing was, are you going to trend in Google News? Which is really funny if you think about The iPhone had just been out for three years, basically, right? It came out like just, it was very early days and even social media like was out, but it wasn't thought of as news centered. It was more personal, but Google news was the thing. And so the clients loved it. If you could get AARP article right on the headline for some topic.
00:07:58
Speaker
I feel like some memories I have of you is I remember your interview and you wore a tie with boats on it. I'm sure I got it from my dad. And I remember you every day would eat a bagel with crunchy peanut butter. And um I remember Kevin, one of our coworkers was always like, Blaze is getting the peanut butter everywhere. It was just an explosion of bagel and peanut butter. And then i know it's, especially like when you're 22 entering a ah place like that, you're basically like an undomesticated farm animal. I remember saying in the interview, someone, I think it was James was his name or whatever. He he said,
00:08:36
Speaker
How do you do under pressure? And I remember saying, i flourish under pressure. That was the stupidest response in retrospect. and then he But it was funny because it was divided by all the topics, right? We were lifestyle and- Yeah, your team.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, whatever the team was. And I also remember too, you were you were a really fast writer. like You'd finish up sometimes at 2.30 and bounce. And you had all you hit your numbers for the day and your clients were happy. You were always really good at it.
00:09:01
Speaker
So then after you left Brafton, you focused, you went into kind of, all right, so- I feel like one thing you've done so is I feel like you're so good at spotting opportunities. And also I feel like you have an intuitive sense of what's the cutting edge or like what's happening next in anything related to content or digital marketing. Where did you go from Rafton and why do you think you're so good at getting on the edge of things?
00:09:24
Speaker
I tend to, and I think Brafton was a little bit like this too, but my interview response to that is always go for the greenfield opportunities, right? And yeah what that means is it's still content marketing at the end of the day. It says, okay, has the entire world written about this 1000 times over?
00:09:41
Speaker
So has the story been told is really my number one question. So after Brafton, I went to Constant Contact. That was email marketing software and they were really thinking pretty cutting edge as well. It was around 2012, think.
00:09:54
Speaker
just how do we start a content marketing program because we have small business owners who really need to learn why email marketing is important. yeah And my job there taught me mostly to be not afraid of phones because still coming in as a shy English major person, was like, okay, I can write the content, but then they made me talk to customers. So the big learning from there was the most important thing for the company is do you have the voice of the customer in the content and in the marketing?
00:10:21
Speaker
And you'd hear them clatter around in like the kitchen or whatever. And they'd be like, yeah, the emails I send them, what do you want to know? And so that was really the connection of, okay, writing all this content, finding the story, but also getting the voice of the actual end user.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah. So that was the big learning there. it was also my first software as a service job, which kind of departed from the agency world a bit. yeah And then I went back to the agency life at March Communications because again, they wanted content. They wanted to start a content department.
00:10:50
Speaker
This was a B2B space. How does that apply with B2B marketing? But I also missed just having numerous clients at that time and trying to like really juggle a bunch of things because I still wanted to learn. wanted to learn more about tech because I also was always interested in Cunning edge technology, basically. So at Constant Contact, you were calling to do like customer interviews, essentially. to like It's funny, we're we were on a kickoff call yesterday asking a new client in the data space for things like that. And I totally agree with you. was like, if you can have the exact phrasing of what customers say, it's so helpful and useful.
00:11:28
Speaker
And also I think it's really good earlier in your career to like agency in-house. Like you learn a lot in both settings. And if you're in one for too long, you're going to get tired or burned out or bored with it. So I think that's super interesting about going to a space where you feel like the story hasn't already been told. If you're talking to someone who's stuck in their career, as someone who's moved up and onward so much, do you have advice? Like if someone's, I'm just super stuck, I'm applying, I'm not finding anything. What would you say to them?
Advice on Career Challenges
00:11:59
Speaker
i I find with marketers, we tend to forget what we've done already very quickly. And there's two reasons for that. Number one is everyone's off to the next thing because they have shiny object syndrome, but that can end up making you feel like you tread water because it feels like you're not building something.
00:12:16
Speaker
And so you end up getting stuck. And the reason you're stuck is because you can't tell your own story from where you started in your job and where you are now. And the reason that happens is because you don't save your stuff.
00:12:27
Speaker
Like literally the most important thing at this point is having a portfolio. And if you have something you're proud of and you're feeling stuck, you need to download it. You need to look back at your old stuff that you are proud of because guess what? You forgot what was cool about it. I guarantee. So like I have a Dropbox of all the really good marketing campaigns and initiatives.
00:12:47
Speaker
So that's been really helpful because you have to look at... If you've built the things already, what can you take out of there that you can reshape and get unstuck basically? If that makes sense.
00:12:59
Speaker
I think that's awesome advice. It's funny. People will say, oh, whenever someone gives you praise or you get kudos or something, put it in a file and you're feeling insecure. if can look at it, but I like your version better. And it's also making me think of a couple of weeks ago, there's a writer at Medbury, Rachel, who I'd worked with for a really long time at Brafton and Rachel's amazing.
00:13:20
Speaker
And I was talking about this challenge we were having with one particular client. And Rachel was like, you gave me great advice on this years ago. She's like, you said this. And I was like, oh yeah, i did. And I had a moment where I realized like sometimes in a different context or a different environment, like we forget, it's what you're saying is we forget what we've already learned and having something you can come back to, to be like, yeah, I already figured that out years ago. I think that's an awesome, I love that idea. Yeah. That's why people like frameworks and methodologies, um which sounds so corporate that people tend to not like those because it doesn't seem innovative. But most of the companies I've joined now are hiring me because I can have a repeatable methodology of something. And if you're coming in and you can go back to your other presentation that you presented to two other companies and say, okay, I thought about this way.
00:14:11
Speaker
Then how can I apply this to this current situation? It's still new, but it at least gives you guardrails. Because the most dangerous thing for marketing especially is if you can't even start the story or find out where you are in that process, then you can definitely feel driftless. Yeah, totally.
00:14:28
Speaker
all right. While you're doing all this stuff, have you ever had moments where you're like, oh man, I'm super burned out right now?
00:14:36
Speaker
It's going to sound... ah Yes and no. And I don't really get burned out from workload because I will always try to find outlets to still be creative in ways in my bands or writing. And as long as you can protect your actual soul from some stuff once in a while, that's what I find. that burnout actually comes from uncertainty and it comes from toxic manager people.
00:15:05
Speaker
The biggest thing that can happen is if you get in a spiral you're getting bad feedback too often, yeah that's when you can start feeling feeling burned out. That's what I've experienced anyway. Because you you suddenly get very shaken and you're not confident. Once you lose your confidence, because every marketer or anybody really is just We're built on air. Like our entire career is just built on hot air.
00:15:25
Speaker
And if you get enough people to believe your story, then it's real. But as soon as someone says, I don't believe that at all. And they say it like a hundred times, then you can say, oh, maybe I'm not good at anything. So that's where you burn out it the most. I think it's really wise.
00:15:37
Speaker
I think that's very true. And I haven't heard anyone talk about it like that. All right. So broadly content and tech right now, what do you think is most exciting and what do you think is most frustrating? It's AI a hundred percent because I'm experiencing these things where there's a saying about AI right now.
00:15:55
Speaker
If you can't be bothered to write it, why would anyone be bothered to read it? Mm-hmm. And then there's this study that came out that said Microsoft found that the more employees that are using AI, the less critically they're thinking about things because you're not internalizing anything. You're actually not learning anything and you're actually forgetting the skills you do have.
00:16:17
Speaker
There's a very big danger of being overly reliant on AI that makes things seem simple. But the frustrating thing to me in that sense is AI's a great tool, it's really fun to use, but it's not solving the biggest problem, which is how do you get people to care or pay attention to stuff?
00:16:36
Speaker
and that I think we've forgotten about that part where it's, yeah, we already had infinite content. We already had infinite templates. like Canva already existed. like I could use stock photos already. The exciting part is When you're, I'd say the two things that have made me like love technology again, actually was Squarespace, just by trying to build websites with it, because there's so much potential for websites and everyone's website is boring for some reason. There's no reason we should all have boring websites. it's just what's happened for for some reason, but there's so much fun stuff to experiment with.
00:17:08
Speaker
And then Canva it literally has revolutionized design thinking. um And it doesn't mean you don't need a designer, but it does mean you can brainstorm and think about things differently.
00:17:18
Speaker
And to me, that's very empowering because the internet is because it's video first now. It's image first. And that trend is going to continue. And it's part of the reason I i joined Silverpush because I think it's 80, maybe 90% of all content on the internet is video now, right? it's Whoa. People are not...
00:17:36
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And you have to think about generationally how people are processing information is not through the written word. That part I'm still not sure about, but the more empowering you get to think about visually how you're telling your story and then mapping it to the writing, those tools have made it very exciting in a way.
00:17:57
Speaker
That's really cool. I appreciate everything you said about that, the high output and like the synthesizing we were doing. I feel like it was really good, even though it was draining, it was very good for my brain. Like I think I just got a little smarter yeah pushing yourself to that. And when I'm, we use AI at MedFairy sometimes, and but I do think we use it like the way I think of it is I don't care how we get to great content as long as it's great.
00:18:22
Speaker
So if AI can help you lighten the load a little, but you're still bringing taste and a lot of making judicious decisions. But I do think I don't know. I feel like millennials were always in this weird spot, but I think for a generation that never has the moment where they had to do it all more manually or they didn't learn how to edit their own work or tighten things up,
00:18:48
Speaker
They don't have anything to bring to AI. I'll freely denigrate it. i get So yeah, you bring up a point that Jerry Seinfeld made at a commencement speech. okay But he said, you know what the motto for AI should be?
00:19:02
Speaker
It's like Nike, which is just do it. But AI is the opposite. It's I just can't do it. The intention of creating an article for Grafton helped our brains process information. And that's a lifelong skill that we've already covered a little bit.
Creativity and Team Management
00:19:16
Speaker
Whereas if the AI is just spitting it out and there's one person behind the wheel clicking the prompts, it's really not the same kind of output, I don't think. Yeah. For the person, I should say.
00:19:29
Speaker
What is something that you think people should be paying more attention to when it comes to marketing or content? Ooh, this is the big one for me. Coming from bigger organizations, there's always a constant tension, honestly, in my career too, where I'm going from startups to enterprise type of levels.
00:19:50
Speaker
But what I've seen is what I, call I have a fancy term for it. I call it the beer bureaucratization of the mind. And what what I mean by that is you, you get in your own way by thinking too hard about, can you do it?
00:20:08
Speaker
Do I have the resources to do it? Do I have a plan to do it? That will take you an entire week just to get through that process when you could have just done it. And that gets very meta in a way when it comes down to bigger companies, because And this goes back to the confidence thing. If you're not confident in the core product that you're creating or the material, yeah because you think it'll already get shot down somewhere up above the chain, people tend to spin in circles and then they get behind on their deadlines.
00:20:37
Speaker
But you notice that a lot with people where you say, okay, so we want one blog post this week. And then it's the end of the week. And you said, what happened? And even the writer doesn't know. They're like, I was doing this angle and then I was trying to do this.
00:20:48
Speaker
It's yeah, but you didn't follow through on the thing initially. yeah And that's the process, right? The process is actually, again, it goes back to failing first or building something that was kind of janky. yeah And then you can see it in its entirety. But I do this all the time where I do something halfway and then I lose faith in it, but I actually didn't get to the point where I would have learned what I needed to.
00:21:09
Speaker
And then I have no proof I was even doing the thing that happens to everybody in these companies where, cause that's where you get these stereotypes of long approval times. It's because people are all circling around the drain for like weeks over one tiny word change or something. And that's what happens to bigger organizations, especially I've seen it.
00:21:26
Speaker
That's super interesting. Definitely resonates with me. There is like clients we've worked with or in my. Sure. Yeah. From an agency, you can see it on the other side. But what was it? The bureaucratization of the mind.
00:21:39
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Cause it has to be as complicated as possible. There's eight different ways to do something and maybe one's a little better, but it doesn't matter. And it's just pick one and do it. But then either I definitely, over the years, you, you know, those clients where it's like you pick something.
00:21:56
Speaker
you did it and now 80 people are like, but what if we do blah, blah. And it's guys, none of it matters. Just we just need to sometimes you just need to move things forward. But also i feel like thinking I feel like you're probably into this stuff like Julia Cameron. Did you read Rick Rubin's book?
00:22:12
Speaker
So I have a whole complaint about that book. Okay. All right. Tell me. I want to hear it. Yeah. So Rick Rubin's big theory is that, and he exemplifies this with his system of a down example where the singer didn't have an idea. he said, go pick up a random book.
00:22:25
Speaker
That's the famous line in the song. That's what happened. He inspired the guy. So that means his idea is creativity and inspiration is a source outside of us rather than inside. And we need to open ourselves up to it.
00:22:37
Speaker
And that's how we become creative, which I love. But at the same time, there's still a financial incentive and a deadline, even to his stuff. It's like he won eight Grammys, right? And if you wait too long and you try to be too open to your point,
00:22:51
Speaker
you actually destroy the entire process again because you're like, oh, I'm actually open to this other possibility that I just saw over here. yeah And eventually you have to create the guardrails again, like the shape of the thing.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I think with digital stuff, it's much easier to just have a blob And if you go to that word bureaucratization, the word there is bureau. And so what you said with 80 people, 80 people have the same one like shirt in their bureau and they're all, okay, I'll check on this later or I'll wear it sometime and then they put it away. But we don't know if someone else will wear it. So it's not like you said, just choose one out the eight things. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. I like that. What was coming to mind for me was I feel like all of them, let's go with Julia Cameron, maybe a little less.
00:23:37
Speaker
is this idea of we all have such negative voices around our own creativity, or a lot of us definitely mean like negative self-talk, like stupid idea, shouldn't do it, started it. And you're like a third through your shitty first draft of something and you throw it out.
00:23:52
Speaker
But really what you need to do is just finish the shitty first version of something. And I think I hadn't really thought of it, but I feel like what you're talking about is like the professional version of that, where it's like,
00:24:03
Speaker
you get caught up and stopped before you even got started because you're so worried about what your boss's boss will green light or not green light. And the idea of putting something together when there's like layers of people who are going to approve or pull it apart is like paralyzing and so shitty from the perspective of just trying to create and do anything, even if it's in a professional context.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah. And that goes back to my whole, what happens, how do you burn out the most is you lose confidence in yourself because of that type of process. Yeah. And if I ever get, i feel myself getting like that.
00:24:36
Speaker
You have to throw out everything. And what I do now is I go to Canva and I just have a template, a new template. I say, okay, if I'm just coming onto this project, what would I actually say without all the random stuff and strings attached from different departments and things like that?
00:24:52
Speaker
Because sometimes that can give you ah new perspective. And that's the perspective that'll make you get passionate about the project again, even if it doesn't actually get into the final draft. Have you ever been in a dynamic where you're managing a team and you feel like that team is feeling the pressure of all these layers? How do you support the folks working for you?
00:25:15
Speaker
That's probably my most controversial advice, but I think it's the best the best management advice to protect your team is to agree in bad faith. well if my tea So like at Criteo, for example, we had 15 different countries.
00:25:30
Speaker
That was just the primary countries. We had a 90 person marketing team total, 80 of whom had to talk to my team to request something. okay Everyone's stuff is a priority because there's just not enough people to build the stuff.
00:25:43
Speaker
yeah What I would do if they so if my team was like, oh, Germany really is being annoying about needing something or whatever. I'd say I'd talk to the field leader there and I'd say, oh, we'll definitely get to that.
00:25:56
Speaker
That's it. And then maybe we'd get to it later. And then if he followed up, I'd say, oh yeah, that's definitely on the calendar. And it probably was on the calendar for next quarter. But the the strategic way of doing that is you're making the stakeholder feel seen and you're also getting that person out of the team's process.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. The more professional answer is you, if you're a manager, your first job is to shield the team, especially if they're creatives from any type of request, like you're supposed to be the conduit for that.
00:26:29
Speaker
And you also have to explain to the team what the priority is. So you're setting the vision. yeah And so they actually feel protected by just the fact that you are the one guiding the whole roadmap.
00:26:40
Speaker
yeah And that's because he was an executive. yeah and He led the company better because everyone knew what the vision was. But if different teams don't know what the vision of their manager is, then they don't feel secure either. And they don't know what they even should do. No, I like that. I love your, what did you call it? a Agree in bad faith? Yeah. yeah like mom everyone yeah Everyone does that. Like we make promises that we're definitely not going to keep because it's deadlines and in like resources, but yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
What's the point of saying, no, we're never doing it. Like you you can just say like recently, i like with teams, I'll just say, we'll get to that next quarter. This is, we can put it. Yeah, we can definitely do it, but it'll be in April.
00:27:20
Speaker
And I think not enough people do that, which is why you end up again with all these half finished things. If everything's a priority, it's like the the basic thing. Yeah, 100%. It makes sense. I remember moments where the team would tell me,
00:27:36
Speaker
it's tough because everything feels like a priority. And if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And it was in those moments where they were getting like from various teams, different requests, et cetera. And as you can prioritize anything like, all right, let's sit down, let's put these projects on a Google doc and we'll do one, two, three, four. And no, I think that's all really good advice. Okay.
00:27:55
Speaker
Last question on content before we jump into your sub stack, which I love and really want to talk about. What do you think people still don't get right about content even in 2025?
00:28:07
Speaker
I think actually it's going back to what you're doing with this podcast is it it, people come first in the content now and that you see that on LinkedIn all the time. Of course, in a way people are getting it, but they're not creating a strategy around it.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because AI and SEO have become this kind of mechanical process. The thing that really makes people light up still is seeing just some exchange from somebody. It can be a written Q and a It could be a story of how customers are succeeding or doing something, but it's just people based stories. That's the end of the day. That's what the type of content that really resonates.
00:28:43
Speaker
And I think a lot of B2B tech, especially will lose sight of the actual person in the entire process. Any tech has to have the end user in mind, right?
00:28:54
Speaker
So for my current company, there's one way to look at the technology and the algorithm that's changing the context in real time to make sure the ad is extremely relevant. But it's another way to look at, here's this guy, it's midnight. He's watching Woodstock 99. Korn is on stage.
00:29:11
Speaker
Maybe he wants to see tickets for a concert as the ad and not the B2B software. He's always going to hate for interrupting his Woodstock experience. Yeah. And so I'd say content has to focus on the end user's experience because that's how you end up telling the good stories. It's just still has to be people first, I'd say.
00:29:28
Speaker
i think that's really good advice and really insightful. Thank you. I love your sub stack. Talk about it. And then let's plug it. Anyone listening should 100% subscribe and we'll put a link in the newsletter to subscribe over to yours. But I feel like from my perspective, it's very much one of your sole protective creative outlets.
00:29:45
Speaker
Why did you start it? What do you write about? I actually started it because I was reading books and I felt like I wasn't absorbing the information enough. And that was frustrating to me. So I'd read, whether it was nonfiction or fiction, I would then look at books on my shelf and then say, I don't remember what was in there.
00:30:02
Speaker
And then the other reason i was starting it was I was reading, and I still do read all these really obscure books. It's the late 19th century French authors. And I know no one in their right mind is actually going to read those people, but I wanted to create a more snackable format for it. So that's why it's called Lit Verse.
00:30:18
Speaker
So it's almost just, okay, if you don't have time to look at Chateau-Brand, the guy who founded Romanticism in France in the 1700s, and you don't want to read his memoirs, here's a blog post about it.
00:30:30
Speaker
I hear, I think it's like back to your AI thing. I definitely do think there's something about writing about what you've learned or read that helps it like stick. Like you remember. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And as it built up, you can see it's weird how writing works, right? Because you're seeing your own philosophy echoed into the stuff as you're processing what you're reading. Mm-hmm.
00:30:51
Speaker
And that's become this interesting thing where I'm following these trails of, okay, what is the overall theme of some of these series? So I started developing different theories and series for the theories, but it's just, yeah it happens incidentally.
00:31:08
Speaker
I can't remember the guy who said this. Oh, it was Sarta. this, is that how you pronounce his name? But he basically said, i wrote and I existed. And so that means you're not actually fully engaged. If you're a writer or prone to writing or creative, you have to express your existence in that way in order to make sense of everything. And so that's what live first has become for me.
00:31:30
Speaker
I really like it I'm glad you do it. Any advice or any tips or tricks you've found for the. It's helped me to have a famous friend. He is one of the number one Substacks. And then he just, so first of all, find a famous friend.
00:31:42
Speaker
But second of all, I think like the thing with Substack is you already have readers. Go to your email, grab all the people that you already know are your friends, text people about it to sign up.
00:31:52
Speaker
And then they're doomed. They can't get off the newsletter list. Right. Everyone listening should know that when you unsubscribe from Substack, we do get an email that tells us you unsubscribed. So what's funny about that is I have those emails, but they're going to my fake email address.
00:32:09
Speaker
That's smart. So I don't, yeah, I don't get the real time updates, but I do. I love when i have a paid version and I love when I post something and I lose a paid subscriber. My God, this thing just cost me like $8 a month out here. This article is not worth it.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a wonderful thing because, and I guess Substack, I should have added in my tools for hope, which is Canva, Squarespace, and Substack. Because all Substack did was say, okay, people want to read stuff in their inbox.
00:32:34
Speaker
yeah and email addresses are the only thing you actually own as a creative person right you're not going to be able to get through the algorithm on linkedin every time yeah you're not going be able to get anything on instagram or tick tock or youtube in the way that you can always reach people if you have a thousand email addresses you can run a survey and then run the results of the survey there's so much stuff you can do because it's creating this personal brand my other advice for starting a Substack is really just do it for yourself first. Do it because you're curious, find something you're curious about and just do that. And don't really think about the readers because it really has to be a passion project at first and probably will always be in a way. But it's very important to have that like outlet, I'd say. Yeah.
00:33:18
Speaker
Like you said. I think that's good advice. I feel like i've always admired, um you've always written, even at Brafton where so many folks were wanted to be writers, but then they had this job where for nine or 10 hours a day, sometimes they're like pounding out content, brutal.
00:33:33
Speaker
And so many people would say like, I wanted to write, but I'm too tired. But you always did it. Like you were writing novels in the background. You were incredibly prolific in that way. I really admire it. It's cool.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, i wrote that novel that was even a satire about Brafton. So I think you read how to get that published one day. I know. I need to talk about half-finished projects. like Books are the number one offender of that. like Even the first entire book is a half-finished project because you didn't edit it enough.
00:34:00
Speaker
But that's the whole other podcast of like books are pointless to write because no one reads if you want to get grim about it. but Anything? like Any last bits that we didn't cover that you feel like, hey, I'd want to say around these topics?
00:34:14
Speaker
No, I think we covered a lot of stuff. I really appreciate you having me on here. It's always fun to, similar to writing, right? Talking about ideas that are in this type of forum, I think, are really helpful for people because, and that's why podcasts are so big now. But yeah, thanks for having me on.
00:34:28
Speaker
No, you're a great guest. I love that you don't like Rick Rubin. I love the bureaucracy of the mind. And what was it? A yes with bad intent? Yeah, pretty much. A lot of good. Agree. Agree. Okay. A little better.
00:34:40
Speaker
thank you and about Yeah, agree in bad faith. This is Blaze's career advice. Thank you so much. I'll hit the top. Take care.