Marketing Millenials - How to Make B2B Content More Engaging, with James Carbary
Tune in as Daniel chats with James Carbary, founder of Sweet Fish Media, about the power of human connection in content marketing. James shares why he believes that genuine insight is more effective than brand messaging when it comes to B2B, the importance of hiring creators over traditional marketers, and the benefits of building multiple personal brands within your team. Plus, learn the reasons why James thinks audience building is critical to launching any podcast and why co-hosted content is king.
Summary (Generated with Bash)
Welcome to an exploration of insights into the evolution of B2B content and the role of talent development in marketing. In the world of marketing podcasts, the Marketing Millennials stands out, focusing on unfiltered conversations with marketing leaders.
James Carbary, featured twice, brings new perspectives shaped by his journey from an entrepreneur to a content marketing enthusiast. He emphasizes building internal talent to create influential leaders and trusts faces more than logos in today’s brand market.
The Value of Internal Talent Development
Revolutionizing B2B Content
Most B2B content lacks genuine insight and personality, thus failing to make a transformative impact.
Interview-based shows can lead to disjointed overarching themes if not tightly integrated.
Creative solutions like co-hosted commentary formats can bring expertise and timely discussions to the forefront.
The Rise of Commentary-Based Formats
Status quo challenges and the move towards co-hosted commentary style formats for B2B.
Building personal brands within a team enhances the company's influence and longevity.
Importance of aligning expertise with content creation for greater resonance with the audience.
Aligning with Modern Content Creation
IBC companies should aim to employ creators with genuine insights over traditional marketing roles.
Creativity in content creation will be the driving force behind demand generation and pipeline growth.
James Carberry’s insights point to the need for a paradigm shift in B2B content production. As the industry moves away from traditional, SEO-driven content, engaging, insightful, and personality-driven creations that cultivate brand affinity are becoming the keys to building a strong, loyal audience.
Read the full discussion in the transcript below 👇
Audio OWEWK6200924451.mp3/2024-01-23
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the No BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray, and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up. We're building a muscle of being able to build up talent internally to create influence in our market. And I think that's a really valuable skill to have today as a company, as an entity, knowing that we can take somebody and develop them into being trusted leaders in our space that people trust in a world where people again, trust faces more than logos. I think every company should be aspiring to build that muscle. I form forms that break the norm. Get more data like signups, feedback, and anything else with forms that are designed to be refreshingly different. Learn more and get started for free at tideform.com. Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. This is actually a cool episode because James is actually episode one, and he's back again for another episode in the 200s, so back again for number 200 something, which is exciting. But things have changed in the last two years, so his perspectives have changed. My perspectives have changed. So it's good to see how his perspectives have changed since two years ago. So welcome to the podcast, James. Thanks, my man. It's been too long, so I'm pumped to hang out again and jam on something that I've been thinking a lot about. I think you've been thinking a lot about it, and yeah, it'll be fun to process out loud with a bunch of folks listening. First let's go into how did you get into marketing and what you do, and then we can get into some people's perspective on where we're coming from. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of a weird path into marketing. Out of college, got a business degree, didn't really know what I wanted to do, started working for some big corporates, realized that wasn't for me, and then ended up getting this insane opportunity to go do helicopter logistics for NASCAR for a really small business based in Orlando. So that job opportunity took me from Oklahoma to Orlando, and that was really my first time getting to work for an entrepreneur. And so in my time getting to work for that entrepreneur and just seeing kind of the freedom, the autonomy, what that choice to start a business meant for his lifestyle and his family, that's what really sparked my interest in entrepreneurship. And so built my first company probably two years after leaving that guy's business, and it was starting my first company that really got me into marketing because it was a technology type solution that ended up failing miserably. But I found somebody to build the product, but I had to figure out how to go to market with it. And so in that pursuit, I started really digging into content marketing and really became attached to content marketing. You know, this idea that you can create stuff on the internet that makes people come to you as opposed to having to go to them and force something down somebody's throat. Instead create stuff that people really like so that they want to work with you and they come to you. And so that was always really attractive to me. So that's kind of the path to marketing, started an agency back in 2015, started as a blog writing agency, evolved into a podcast agency, and now we've become a media brand or audience growth agency for B2B companies. And so we've produced hundreds of shows for clients and repurpose that into all kinds of different content. We're starting to get really serious with YouTube newsletters and social. So kind of taking the podcast as the hub of the content wheel or flywheel and turning it into a bunch of content that can reach a whole lot of people and platforms where everybody's hanging out these days. One of the reasons why we brought you on is because you have a take on the future of B2B content. So what is your thoughts on where B2B content is going? Yeah, so I think the big problems with B2B content, the two big ones from my perspective are most B2B content lacks genuine insight. There's nothing about most content coming out of B2B companies that is actually going to transform the way somebody thinks. It's a lot of Me Too content, copycat content, what's already ranking on Google for this particular keyword. How can we reconstruct this so that it's a little bit different and maybe we add a little bit more to it so that it outranks it on Google. But it lacks true insight and then it lacks personality. There's no human attached to it. And you obviously being at work week, you guys are big believers, people over institutions. So preaching to the choir there. But I just think people are naturally more drawn to a human than a brand or a logo preaching at them. And humans are obviously more easier to resonate with, easier to connect with than a faceless logo. So I think those are the two big problems with the state of where B2B content is today. It lacks true insight and it lacks personality and us being in the space that we've been in and producing hundreds of podcasts for clients and turn that into thousands of pieces of content. We've also seen kind of this rise in what I think we were a big part in creating, which was this movement towards interview-based shows. And there are some interview-based shows that are fantastic. Obviously this show, there's folks like Dave Gearhart at Exit Five doing a great job with interview-based shows. One of the most popular podcasts on the internet right now, Joe Rogan, interview-based show. So this is not to say that interview-based shows are dead and that all interview-based shows are bad. But after producing hundreds of them, we've realized that there are a lot of inherent problems in them, particularly when companies try to do them. So most people are not skilled interviewers. And when you're talking about B2B company, any sort of company hosting a show, it's typically, you know, they're tapping one of their executives, they're tapping maybe somebody in marketing, and it is a legitimate skill. Barbara Walters and Oprah became Barbara Walters and Oprah because they were exceptionally gifted in the art of interviewing. Most VPs of innovation are not skilled in that, or, you know, the executives in companies are great at doing the thing that they're being paid for. And then it's like, hey, do this whole other thing and we expect you to be fantastic at it. So most people are not skilled interviewers. And most guests, at least the folks guesting on B2B shows, aren't really skilled communicators. Maybe they're prepped by PR going into an interview. They've got a very tight box that they can play within, they can't say certain things, they've got to toe the line, they can't really offer up a provocative point of view because it might offend somebody and the company they work for is public, and so they can't drag their company's name through the mud. So it just results in a lot of dry, boring, substance-less content. And then the other thing, Daniel, I'd be curious to get your take on this too. With a lot of interview-based shows, at least the ones that we've produced, we just noticed this trend that the overarching story for the show, the theme for the show, ended up being disjointed because every episode was reliant on what the guest was bringing to the table, which again, can be great. You look at Joe Rogan's show, you look at XF5, you look at this show, it's not to say that you can't pull that off. But when we're looking at these hundreds of shows that we've done, that ends up creating a really bad listener experience more often than not because the thought leadership jumps from episode to episode, topic to topic, if the host doesn't do a really good job of making sure that they're waving in their points of view, their perspective, and the overarching story of what their show is about or the angle about what their show is about. Jay Akunzo does a phenomenal job of this. He does interview people, but he does a phenomenal job of knowing what his show is, what the story is that he's trying to tell, and then weaving every single guest into fitting his narrative as opposed to shaping every episode around each individual guest so that it becomes this disconnected mess of content. And then you end up sacrificing the thought leadership. So many of our clients, we say like, hey, why are you wanting to produce a show? Why are you wanting to work with us? Oh, we want thought leadership, and we want to have a guest on every episode. It's like, if you want thought leadership, you actually need to have thoughts that are leading the way, and they're influencing the way that people are thinking. And if every single episode is just focused on a guest, it's hard to create that thought leadership unless you're doing it in other ways. In your example, you're doing a lot of that thought leadership on LinkedIn. You built a massive platform for yourself and for marketing millennials, and so most companies obviously don't have that. And so then they're relying on their show to do that for them, but then their format doesn't necessarily allow them there. So that's where I think you have to understand what the current problems are with it before you can really start to say, okay, where's it going? Where does it need to go? So what's your take on that, man? Am I assessing the problems right? Am I missing something? What's your take? There's a couple of problems that are happening right now. One, I don't think the person in a company necessarily has the expertise of the audience to be able to deliver value of what the audience has to be. So whoever the host is, they don't bring on a creator or an expert in the industry to be able to tell a story that also resonates to the audience. Then also, why am I listening to this random guy talk to me about, or random girl, or random woman, or random person at the company talk to me about what I'm supposed to say, and they don't understand me as a person. So I think that is one problem that they have, is lack of expertise on the podcast. Two, it's really hard to rely on, and this is a problem on my podcast too, it's really hard to leave your fate up to someone accepting an invite and coming and you doing outreach all the time. I think when you have a person doing it or two people doing it, you can set your own schedule and produce whenever you want. It's hard to get someone on the show, so it's a time problem. I think that's part of the issue. I think also a lot of people don't understand how to create content that goes beyond a podcast. I think the problem with a lot of, if you're trying to distribute, luckily, a lot of times I would recommend people build an audience first before a podcast, because it's easy to drive people to a podcast, but if you're starting the other way, you need ability to take clippable parts of the podcast and put it on other shows like you're talking about. On channels, it's actually a lot easier to build an audience with. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people can't set up clips that way or questions that way, and they get an answer that would actually resonate on social. So I think it's a lot harder to do that. Also, I think this happens in every platform. I think the people who dominate a style will always, and that has been consistent for over two or three years, are going to stay at the top of that style. But if you're starting something new, you can't try to compete against the people who have been there for two or three years. You can start doing things that are way different than what they're doing. So I think what you're saying with commentary-based podcasts or trying to do something different, I also think people are inherently used to talk shows, radio shows, news, politics. Yeah, exactly. Commentary is nothing new. We're very accustomed to commentary. Yeah. So relevancy of those things. I think if you have a good network and you can pull in great guests, then maybe having a show with guests is good. But if that's not your strong suit, even the idea of – I know people say you get to do that to pull in your ideal prospects, but most of the prospects you bring in are not going to be interesting on the podcast, and it's not going to be a fun show. We've literally ran that playbook hundreds of times, and you're exactly right. Just because someone happens to be an ideal prospect for you does not mean that they have prolific insights that are going to engage an audience. So you end up sacrificing good content at the altar of building a relationship, and maybe that's the right move for you in the stage that your business is in. And based on your goals, that might actually be the right play, but it's certainly not for everybody. I think the biggest problem, if I go into it, and I think for your play, which we'll talk about, is I think the number one thing for B2B is a trustworthy face that can show expertise, otherwise it's going to fail anyway. I think expertise is the number one thing that people want to hear. And to be able to have thought leadership, you need someone who understands the topic deeply, or you need two people that understand the topic deeply. Otherwise nobody's going to pay attention, and that's where investment in talent and creators, you might have someone who's already in there. Like when I worked for Service Titan, we hired two people who used to be customers. They were like plumbers, they were like people who actually ran customer advocacy and stuff like that. So they were familiar faces. They would go into places and say, we've done this before, we understand. So I think that's the biggest problem is the lack of expertise. And mostly the hosts don't have that. So that's the problem as well. And even when you do have, I mean, I've got examples of shows we're producing right now where the host does have the expertise, but there are other factors, like they're being way too boxed in by their company because they can't say this, they can't say that, they can't even allude to another competitor. And so you put these people in a box that makes it impossible for them to win. But you mentioned You mentioned something that I've been really hot on lately. So if we've outlined what the problem is, I think a solution, there are obviously a lot of ways to solve this problem, but I think a solution that we're running with, we've been running with for like the last eight or nine months with our show, with B2B Growth, but also starting to do it with clients is what we've said, this co-hosted commentary style of format or this making your content in such a way where you have multiple co-hosts commenting on relevant, timely things that are happening in your space that are relevant to your market and weaving in those hosts points of view inside of that commentary. And the reason I think this is such a huge win, I mean, you've seen it with New Heights, the New Heights podcast with the Kelsey brothers. They're obviously active. Well, I guess as of this morning, Jason announced his retirement, but they're active in the NFL. So the expertise that you called out is real. Both those guys are in it, literally playing somebody every single week. So you feel like you're on the inside of this circle that is very elusive and like, oh my gosh, like I feel like I'm on the inside of something that is really hard to get on the inside of. And so that expertise is huge. Valuetainment with Patrick Bette David, Tom Ellsworth, and Adam Sosnick. Patrick Bette David built and sold a hundred million dollar business. So when he does commentary on stories that are happening in business or politics, he's got plenty of points of view, but those points of view are not what's driving the content. What's ever happening in the cultural moment, whether he's commenting on what's happening in Israel or he's commenting on Elon Musk taking over Twitter, rebranding it X. He's bringing that credibility to a topic that people are already interested in because it's timely and it's happening right now. And the combination of both of those things, expertise, like what you talked about with topic selection being not our point of view, which is what a lot of B2B companies want. All they want to do is talk about their thing, their thing, their thing, their thing. And that drives the editorial as opposed to going, no, what's already interesting to the people we're trying to engage. Let's talk about that. And then we weave in our point of view into how we talk about that. I think it works. My First Million, one of the hugely popular podcasts in the entrepreneurship space, they do the exact same thing. They curate a list of stories, three, four or five stories that they want to talk about going into the episode. And both Sean and Sam, successful entrepreneurs with multiple exits under their belt, they've got the expertise and they're throwing in their two cents on the open AI thing that just happened where Sam Altman got ousted and then he got brought back in. And hearing those two guys riff on that, super interesting. Marketing Against the Grain, one of the shows in the HubSpot podcast network. Kip Bodner, CMO of HubSpot. And then you've got the other guy who's a CMO of Zapier. I love hearing their takes on what's happening in the world of like marketing and AI. And so I think there's a formula there. I don't want to proclaim that it's going to work for everybody or that it's even going to be the best thing three years from now. But I think there's an opportunity right now. You alluded earlier, Daniel, to like the folks that win with a certain format, they can typically ride that out even long after that format is played out because they've built their audience and they've kind of asserted their dominance. I think there's a season right now that we're stepping into where you can step into like co-hosted commentary style format and you can really dominate and build an audience with that format. And it's sustainable because when's the last time you or I woke up and there wasn't news that happened from yesterday to today? News is happening every single day. With B2B growth, we comment on viral posts that pop off on LinkedIn related to content marketing. There's not been a day that we've been producing the show where something hasn't popped off on LinkedIn for us to comment on. So there's always something for us to talk about. So it's sustainable and we can consistently weave in our point of view into that commentary. And I think it works. The chemistry between the hosts, too, is I think something worth talking about. That's not just something that happens. The Kelsey brothers obviously have known each other for 34 years, Jason and Travis. And so chemistry, I think there are some things you can do to create that chemistry, but you have to be intentional to create it. Because I think when we talk about My First Million, Sean and Sam, it's obvious those two guys are like really close friends. They're ribbing on each other. They're making fun of one another. They're not taking themselves too seriously. And that chemistry is what makes it entertaining, which going back to what's broken in B2B content right now, it's personality-less. It's dry. It's boring. I mean, I feel like we've been saying these things for years. This is not new. Everybody knows B2B content is typically boring, but I don't think we've gotten to the root of like, well, why is that and how do we actually change it? And I think this format takes us a long way in doing that. If we can get the right co-host together, we can curate topics that are relevant and timely for them to comment on. And then we can have solid points of view that can actually transform our market's thinking and weave those points of view into our commentary. I think it becomes a one-two punch that builds brand affinity for us, gives us a great flywheel of consistent content that can go viral on social, that can grow our audience outside of just the podcast feed and can drive pipeline for the business while creating a bunch of raving fans in the process. More ways to grow your business with Typeform. Collect more and better data with forms that embed where people see them from web to email. Typeform can help you ask the right questions at the right time to reveal deeper insights about your customers and prospects. Learn more and get started for free at Typeform.com. I think it's a trend that's been happening a couple, probably like the last couple of years because I think what's happening is the trust in news has gone down and journalism. And what's happening with that, that means that citizen journalism is skyrocketing and people, that's why X is doing well right now. That's why My First Million, not My First Million, it's All In podcast is doing well right now. It's another great example of that format. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're giving unfiltered takes on things that are happening without biases of, and different perspectives of what's happening in the news that is not filtered by this lens or that lens or this lens. It's you giving unfiltered your commentary. You're from an expert opinion side of things. And I think a lot of B2B content for a long time has been just, let's rank for SEO or let's just put out a piece of content without sharing, just putting fluff into it because there's no expertise behind it. I think the problem is that it's been out there for so long that people want tactical stuff from people who are in it, doing it today, instead of opinions of people who actually understand the topics, instead of just random people doing it. I'm not saying journalists. I think journalists could be some of the best interview-based shows if you can get a journalist to do that, because they know how to probe questions and stuff like that. And I think they're the best writers, but a lot of people hire content marketers who aren't journalists or aren't experts in the topic, and they expect them to be experts at something that they've never done in their life. And now it's going into the phase where people want those expert opinions because they're tired of fluffy content out there. The other thing, Daniel, that I really – I mean, what you guys are doing at Workweek is fascinating to me, like the really indexing on the personal brand element of it, the leaning into personalities. What I think a format like this does is co-hosted commentary style format for content. It allows you to build multiple personal brands across your team. And so for B2B growth, I'm obviously a co-host of our show. Benji on our team, who's one of our lead producers, is a co-host. Ali, our director of strategy, is a co-host. Our creative director, Brent, is a co-host. And so by having multiple co-hosts who all we bring a different perspective, we bring a different set of expertise to the commentary that we're giving, but we're able to build thought leadership across multiple people on your team. And so I'm under no disillusion that Ali or Brent or Benji are going to stay at Sweetfish for the entirety of their career. It's not the 1960s anymore. That's not how it works. And so knowing – I think people are so fearful of investing in personal brands of their people because it's like, oh, well, when they leave, they take the audience with you. But what they don't acknowledge is that, yeah, but while they're with you, you get that benefit of the trust that they've created. We've had multiple people at Sweetfish leave that people still think of Sweetfish when people see Dan Sanchez on LinkedIn or Logan Lyles on LinkedIn or Rex Bibberston on LinkedIn. They still have a positive association between that person and our brand long after they're gone because those people, one, they speak highly of us whenever they're interviewed on podcasts or whenever they mention us in their content. But the real tangible benefit, it's not like I need to hold on to them forever to be able to derive real value from them while they are on our team. And it's just a very short-sighted mindset. But you hedge that fear whenever you have multiple people on the team because the likelihood that Brent and Allie and Benji all leave at the same time, that's actually pretty low. It's likely that one of them leaves and then a year or two later, another one of them leaves. And maybe in between there, another one of them leaves, but we've replaced them in the mix of the show as they leave. And so we're building a muscle of being able to build up talent internally to create influence in our market. And I think that's a really valuable skill to have today as a company, as an entity, knowing that we can take somebody and develop them into being trusted leaders in our space that people trust in a world where people, again, trust faces more than logos. I think every company should be aspiring to build that muscle. I think the reason why a lot of people don't stay and what companies should do is they should align incentives on whatever they're doing to the podcast or whatever as it grows, they should get upside in what's happening to that. I think what's happening is they're like, oh, I grew this podcast to 2 million, I'm still making $80,000. The problem is that if this grows to 2 million and it's producing X amount of revenue, I feel like they're so valuable as a creator that they should get X percentage of rev share or something towards whatever they're doing to keep them as a creator for a longer time. Because I think the value of that face is going to be more and more valuable as you grow up. Just how people take Michael Jordan and be the face of Nike, just how they take LeBron and be the face of Nike, just how they took Tiger Woods. Those are multiple personality, because they're hedging that they're in a long-term contract with this person that get upside as they face. If you invest in them at smaller, you can have a contract that as you get X amount of revenue, you get X amount. But I think the problem is that it is not upside for people to create content internally. Why I think WorkWeek model works is because it's upside as we create more content, we get better content, our revenue grows, we also grow income as we start doing that. I think that's what keeps people staying for a long period of time. It's a smart take. I love talking about this stuff. Another component of it that I think could be interesting for companies to think about, if you're looking at co-hosted commentary, maybe you have one or two people in house that could be that talent. But what if you tapped somebody who already has an audience to be that third co-host or second co-host, however many co-hosts you want to have? Now, obviously, you would have to come up with some sort of contract and compensation for them contributing, being a contributor to the show. But as part of that contract, you get built-in distribution. You say, you've got to post about the show in your newsletter once a month or on social three times a month or whatever the case may be. I think there could be some really interesting collaborations with partnering with creators that aren't even in-house, that don't even work for your company, but they become the face of your media brand or one of the faces of your media brand. You can leverage the audience that they do already have. Hopefully, you'll help them grow their audience. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. The content they're creating with you continues to allow them to grow their own audience. Then you're tapping into the audience that they're building as they're creating content for you or with you. There's two examples in the real world right now. The creator model is the same as the athletes that are signing gear deals to Nike. They're the face of that, that only wear Nike, that only do this and only do that for Nike and whatever they're doing, they're wearing Nike. That's a creator being part of the brand. That's one model. The other model is flow from progressive being the face of the brand, long-term contract. They are the face of the brand. They're the creator in-house. People know the brand because of flow. This happened. The thing is, the model hasn't moved to B2B yet. I think once you realize that this position of someone who has an existing audience that you could sign to a long-term contract to be part of your organization, to be the face, to help you have expertise in the face. Just how Hexclad, for example, is in the DTC space, but they signed Gorda Ramsey to be the face of their cookware brand for a long-term period of time. That's the same exact thing as hiring a creator internally to do that for your brand. Imagine, say, Dave Gerhart was the face of a marketing platform. Yeah. I mean, Gaetano is the face of Cognizant's media or one of Cognizant's shows. I think we're starting to see innovative brands start to dabble in this, but I think it's going to become way more normal. That's not saying the longer. It's either you build up a face in your company and Barstool has done this too. Barstool, they hire talent. They see how they do for a year or two. Once the show has taken off, then they start paying them the big bucks to be part of that show for a long period of time. That's the same model you can do internally. If you think that media is important and you think talent is important, I swear, if they're getting millions and millions of brochures... millions of Russians and driving millions and millions of business and you're keeping paying them 50k a year, they're going to leave. That's just how it's going to go because they know that if they can get 50 million impressions here and make 80, they can go 50 million by themselves and make way more. And even if they don't know that intuitively, if they're legitimately driving that much influence, you don't think people are going to be hitting them up from your competitors because they're absolutely going to be on the radar of your competitors if they're influencing your market the way you hope they are. And so you've got to be able to, if you want to be able to retain them, you've got to be able to compensate them for that. And even with the face of AI right now, faces are going to be even more and more important because they don't know what people are writing, who's writing it, if it's their opinion, if it's not. So your idea of having two people, whether it's you bringing two creators to be the face of your show or you have internal brands doing that, I think faces are going to be keeping the thing of the future and also expertise. I think there's not enough thought leadership, expertise, unique opinions. And the reason why HubSpot Media Company worked is because you thought of HubSpot because they made you better at work every day. If you can do that for someone and be either their news source, their place to go to get better at their job, their place to learn tactical things, their place to make better decisions, they will see you as the trusted source in the industry and then gravitate your brand. I mean, I think about why my first million or new heights, both of those shows are in my regular rotation. And what I like about it is I think we've been on a little bit of a hamster wheel in thinking that all of our content has to be, when we say the content needs to be valuable, it doesn't mean that you need to show a 10-step specific granular process for how to do something. You can also build affinity by being entertaining. And I think the entertainment mixed in with your legitimate expertise, that expertise can come out in a lot of different ways. It doesn't need to be like, this is this hyper tactical thing, go do this right now. But you can tell if somebody is an expert just in the way they talk about something. It's like, oh yeah, that guy knows what he's talking about. And the banter back and forth between two people that have legitimate rapport, good chemistry, talking about topics that are relevant to your work, I just think it's a recipe for being able to build affinity in ways that most B2B companies have not figured out yet. Even with my show, I think people will find guests that they find interesting. Some people are diehard that will listen to every episode, but I think the point of my podcast was that you can listen to topics that you like. I think what you're talking about is a way to create a series, just like a TV show where people come back every week to listen, and that's what you create, a long lasting audience. And I think you could do that with an interview show, but it's a little harder if you don't have good guests and good opinions consistently, it's harder to do. I think so many shows are set up to be so much harder than they need to be because the format isn't conducive to sustainability. And so for us, I know that for B2B growth, I only need three viral posts to comment on to create a good episode of B2B growth. And there are way more than three viral posts about content marketing that happen every single week. And so by that one little slight tweak to our format, it gives us this sustainable mechanism to create content week after week after week. And to your point, being consistent and being able to stay in the game for long enough to build that affinity, I think is a huge part of why a lot of companies miss this too. What is a marketing kill you would die? I think companies need to start hiring creators and stop hiring more traditional marketers. I think companies already have enough marketers and hiring more people to focus on like conversion focused activity is not what's going to drive demand and drive pipeline today. It's hiring people with these genuine insights that are good communicators, whether it's written, verbal video, but true insights communicated well are going to be what moves the needle, not marketers that know how to, not saying that those people are unnecessary. I'm just saying companies have enough of them. You have to start figuring out how do you hire creators? I think everybody needs a social media manager or a content marketing manager. I think their job is to understand platforms, understand, manage when content is shipped, project manage everything. But it doesn't mean that it's impossible for a social media manager to be amazing at TikTok, amazing at LinkedIn, amazing at that. So if you're going to double down and be the best on YouTube and the social media manager is not the best on YouTube, that's where you have a creator and social media manager relationship to do that. Same as content marketing, the head of content. The head of content is designed to, hey, here's where all our content is going to be. Here's where it's going to be. But it doesn't mean they're the best at creating the content. So you go out and get those people to help you create the content. So I think those both positions are needed. I just think a creator doesn't mean they're the best or is not a social media manager and vice versa. They're not a content marketing manager. There's a lot of different skill sets. It's different skill sets. And I think for so long, the Google thing worked for so long. And to a certain degree, it still works. I think people are seeing less and less return from like, let's rank for this keyword and get it in the SERPs. But the jig is getting to be up on that particular tactic. And the future has been here in consumer world for years and years and years and years. I mean, Barstool started doing this a long time ago. Personality led media brands have been a thing for a while. But that's the hill that I would die on is we have to get the right talent into our marketing orgs to be able to execute on this. It's not just a strategy. You actually need the talent to be able to execute it. And that talent is very different than what is likely sitting on your marketing team right now. And I agree with that. I think there's great content marketers out there, but there's also so many people that know how to create great content for your company that you're sleeping on. And the companies that understand this will start skyrocketing in the content marketing game, which I totally believe content marketing is going to be more and more important as advertising costs are going up. And you don't have a distribution channel yourself and you need to build your own. I mean, I hear those guys on Marketing Against the Grain. So the CMO of HubSpot and the CMO of Zapier, they say all the time, distribution is everything. Distribution is everything. Distribution is everything. You look at this $26 billion behemoth in HubSpot and they are building a distribution juggernaut with their podcast network. And they've already got a juggernaut with Google distribution because they rank for every freaking keyword you can imagine related to marketing. There's a HubSpot article about it, but it's really interesting to me. And I think people need to pay attention to like, what are they doing with modern media? What are they doing with audio and video? And you can argue they already are. Every top marketing podcast has that little HubSpot podcast network logo at the bottom of it. I don't know if this show is in that network or not, but it seems like all the... Who's the guy that does StoryBrand? Donald Miller is in there and all these... Amy Porterfield and the online marketing folks, they've really had a master... I mean, even their acquisition of the hustle was for that end game of they're writing a new go-to-market motion. And I think a lot of people are sleeping on it. Well, thank you so much for joining. Where could people find what you're doing and follow you? Yeah. So I'm really active on LinkedIn. So last name is Carberry, C-A-R-B-A-R-R-Y, just James Carberry on LinkedIn. And then sweetfishmedia.com, you can check out what we're doing. We're trying to do a lot of what we're talking about here with our clients and helping them figure out this media landscape that's really challenging to figure out. It is definitely hard to figure out and you definitely should get the right person to help you execute it and, or figure out if it is actually right for you to start doing it. So sometimes it's not right for you. So it's good to get an expert to understand. But thank you so much for joining and I appreciate it. Awesome, man. Love the conversation. And yeah, I will see you on the internet soon. Thanks so much for listening. Tune in next week to hear more great insights from marketing's coolest operators. 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