Latest / Content, Briefly / Announcing the new & improved Superpath Pro

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Announcing the new & improved Superpath Pro · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Putting in writing announcement. It's called Superpath Socials. I like it. So basically, we're gonna have monthly live virtual sessions with breakouts. So we're gonna get everybody together, we're gonna either...
• 0:11
  Sometimes it might just be networking, like, "Hey, we're gonna split into groups of five, meet each other, tell each other what's up." But sometimes they might be themed discussions too.
• 0:19
  So this month, we're talking about how do you all do content reporting. [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. This is a different episode today.
• 0:36
  Talking with Erik Dody, we have a very cool announcement to share. I'll just tease that we're relaunching Superpath Pro. Erik's in charge.
• 0:44
  We've collected a bunch of feedback from members, and we're repackaging the whole thing based on what we're hearing from folks, what you want. So we're gonna talk all about that.
• 0:53
  Before we dive in, I just wanna give a real shout-out to Erik. Erik has been power user of Superpath since very, very early on. I started the company in June 2020.
• 1:04
  I actually went and searched my Gmail, and our first couple email exchanges were July 2020. So couple weeks in to starting Superpath, he was already engaged. He was one of our very first paying customers.
• 1:16
  He participated in everything we've ever done, the webinars, the AMAs, the one-on-ones for Pro members. Just anything we've ever done, Erik has been part of.
• 1:25
  When we launched the marketplace in fall of 2021, he was the very first writer I sourced for our very first customer.
• 1:33
  Interestingly, that was Doc, and now he works at Doc full time, and he's continued to just be such a force for good in the community. I just appreciate him so much.
• 1:41
  When I took paternity leave earlier this year, Erik stepped up into a more formal role, so he's been doing the newsletter and the announcements and doing some other stuff behind the scenes for the community for all of 2024.
• 1:52
  This is the next evolution of that, and I'm so excited that he's gonna be taking a bigger role at Superpath. So major shout-out to Erik Dody. Okay, we have a lot of cool stuff to share today, so let's get right into it.
• 2:04
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• 3:01
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• 3:12
  Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here today with Erik. He's back for epis- I don't know. You've probably done this three times, maybe? Third episode. Anyways, this- Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:20
  This is a very different- Returning guest... very different type of episode today. So normally interviewing people about content operations, content strategy, all that good stuff. Today, we have an announcement to make.
• 3:30
  So Erik, let me hand it over to you. Will you tell us why we're doing this? Yeah.
• 3:35
  So I'm announcing that I'm stepping down from my interim community manager title, whatever that was, and becoming the head of community at Superpath.
• 3:44
  So I'll be not full-time employee, but full-time community manager person running the community from now on. I'll still be working at Doc, but also working at Superpath, so I'm super excited. Thanks for having me.
• 3:59
  Yes, so pumped about this. Seriously, so pumped. Erik, you've contributed so much to the community over the last couple of years. You've been basically running it since I took paternity leave earlier this year.
• 4:10
  This is kinda like the next evolution, not just of your contributions to Superpath, but of the community as a whole as well. So there's a few things happening here.
• 4:20
  One is you're coming in to take over the community portion of Superpath, and as part of that, we're relaunching Superpath Pro.
• 4:28
  So would it be help- maybe I'll just give you, like, quick overview of why we feel this is a good idea. Mm-hmm. So the community has been around for five years, five and a half years at this point.
• 4:39
  There's been a few iterations of it. There was the very early version, which was the content marketing career growth Slack channel, which is a mouthful. Then it became Superpath.
• 4:48
  It was free for three, three something years after that. Last summer, July 2023, made the decision to make some of that paid. In the meantime, there was already something called Superpath Pro.
• 5:02
  So until now, there's actually been two different paid tiers.
• 5:05
  The one is the just the Slack channel, the other is the Slack channel plus our library of courses, monthly one-on-one calls, some exclusive content, that type of thing. That's caused some challenges for us.
• 5:17
  One is just confusion, like which tier is which? What do we call the middle one? We just call it the Slack plan. Anyway, so there's been some confusion about that.
• 5:25
  But then recently, Erik surveyed some of our members to find out, like, what do you want out of Superpath, out of the paid community? And we got some really good feedback.
• 5:34
  Actually, maybe you could tell us about some of that feedback, because that has shaped- Yeah... what we are now going to offer as a single paid tier, Superpath Pro. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:44
  So I'll call it negative feedback, maybe confusion, was over those tiers. Like, people didn't understand, should I be in Superpath Pro? I thought I already was 'cause I paid for the Slack community.
• 5:55
  So just clearing that up. It's kinda like when HBO rebranded to what, HBO Go or whatever. Nobody knows what's going on anymore. Yeah, yeah. But so part of it was just toClear up that confusion.
• 6:05
  Also, I think there was confusion over, like, is this community for freelancers? Is it for in-house people?
• 6:11
  So I think we're really just clarifying too that Superpath is for content career growth, sort of whether you're a in-house person, you work in an agency, you're sort of a high-performing freelancer.
• 6:23
  It's, like, one resource for all the above.
• 6:26
  In terms of the other feedback we got is people who are already paying members, everyone loves what they're getting already, but people said, "If you wanted to add more things, what we really want is more opportunities to connect with each other."
• 6:37
  Like, the everyone's favorite thing about Superpath is the one-on-ones that was part of Superpath Pro, but not the Slack membership. Yeah, yeah. So that was a little confusing. That was confusing.
• 6:45
  And then the people in Slack, people in Slack didn't get that, which was kind of like, you know, if you're talking about your aha moment feature of a product, like, for Superpath, that is the one-on-ones.
• 6:56
  So now we're bringing the one-on-ones to everybody, and I think that will sort of unlock immediate value, like, in the first month when you're a Superpath member.
• 7:03
  So that was, like, the most transformative career growth thing for me, was just every month getting to talk to another content marketer, and it's so different when you're talking one-on-one to someone in terms of what people will divulge about what's going well- Yeah, yeah...
• 7:17
  what they're struggling with. Like, it's just a completely different conversation than what happens over Slack. So there's a lot of, like, hidden value in Superpath that we wanted to make available to everybody.
• 7:27
  Yeah, absolutely. I also find that when you meet someone one-on-one, like on a Zoom call, for example, you establish a relationship that is likely to continue into the future.
• 7:36
  It's like you've added a person to your professional network, maybe even made a friend. You know? And, like, that's someone that you can continue to stay in touch with for a long time. And I-I- Yeah...
• 7:45
  just adding more people to that pool is gonna be... I think it's gonna be really cool just on its own.
• 7:51
  And just for context for people who have not participated in these calls before, basically what we do is we take the member list, put it column A, column B, we randomize both, and then we match you. Very sophisticated.
• 8:00
  Yeah. It's an [chuckles] it's, it's, yeah, it's kind of a funny process. But the idea is that every month you're getting to meet somebody new.
• 8:07
  We actually used to provide kinda, like, brief agendas or, you know, kind of a theme for each month to talk about.
• 8:12
  Maybe we'll bring that back if people want it, but I just found that most people weren't using it, so give us feedback on that too.
• 8:19
  The other thing is we're gonna start to include some additional opportunities for people to connect on a monthly basis beyond just one-on-one calls.
• 8:27
  So there'll be Slack, which is sort of an obvious place to connect, different medium, the one-on-one calls, and then, Eric, what else will be included in this? Yeah.
• 8:35
  So something that's net new for everybody, whether you're on Pro or Slack before, is that we're also gonna do, I haven't named them yet, I think we're gonna call them Superpath Socials.
• 8:45
  So I'm putting in writing announcement. It's called Superpath Socials. I like it. So basically we're gonna have monthly live virtual sessions with breakouts. So we're gonna get everybody together.
• 8:56
  We're gonna either, sometimes it might just be networking, like, "Hey, we're gonna split into groups of five, meet each other, tell each other what's up," but sometimes they might be themed discussions too.
• 9:05
  So this month we're talking about how do you all do content reporting? And basically I'll be there. I'll be facilitating it, splitting you up into groups, and everybody gets to meet each other.
• 9:15
  It's just another opportunity for people to meet, 'cause that's what they wanted, and maybe someday they'll even be in person. I know you've been dabbling with that idea. Yeah.
• 9:25
  I'm really intrigued at the idea of doing some in-person stuff.
• 9:29
  Realistically, it'd be it's a 2025 thing, and actually, I had a conversation with, um, Sean Blanda, friend of Superpath, recently, who was helping me brainstorm what that might look like. We came up with some- Nice...
• 9:40
  I think some really cool ideas. So I won't tease more because it's so, so early, and I am hesitant to commit to anything just yet, but yeah, in-person stuff is definitely coming.
• 9:50
  I don't know about, like, a conference, but at very least meetups, dinners, happy hours, things like that. Mm-hmm. Awesome.
• 9:57
  And very interest- the feedback we got about wanting to connect with people more is very interesting to me because the one-on-ones were really kind of an afterthought in the original version of Superpath Pro, which was, like, summer 2020.
• 10:07
  I really thought the whole thing was gonna be about content, exclusive content, that that would be kind of the primary value add for people.
• 10:16
  And I think it's been useful, but it's just interesting to get the same feedback from a bunch of people, which is like, "Yeah, there's... content is helpful, but there's lots of content."
• 10:24
  You know, the thing that is actually really hard to get is the connections with other people, so, um- Yeah, absolutely. I'll touch a little more on that- Yeah...
• 10:31
  'cause I've been in Superpath for four plus years now, and the people, especially the people I met in my first maybe year of one-on-ones, I have good relationships with all of them now. I follow their careers.
• 10:42
  They follow my career. We touch base often. Like, half of them I've hired as freelancers at some point, or they hired me- Oh, that's funny... as a freelancer at some point.
• 10:50
  So, like, there's been this working relationship that we've built, kind of like having a real peer that you used to have in the office that, like, I don't have those 'cause I'm always a one-person team.
• 10:58
  But it feels like real kind of coworker relationships, which is nice and hard to get if you don't have that one-on-one meeting.
• 11:05
  But yeah, I have these super long-lasting relationships now with people, which is really cool, and I, I didn't expect that, and it's not even what I came to Superpath for, but it was definitely the biggest benefit for me.
• 11:14
  That's super cool. That's really cool. I've actually... I do them too.
• 11:17
  I've done them basically every month since we started because I wanna, like, have the chance to meet people, and it's fantastic, and it's, from the perspective of running Superpath and trying to make it as useful to people as possible, for me, it's sort of like customer research, you know?
• 11:31
  Mm-hmm. I just, like, love to ask people a bunch of questions about, like, what are your problems? Superpath helping? Okay, what, what can we do better? That kind of thing.
• 11:36
  But, um, had a very similar experience, which is like once you make that, once you establish the connection, it is very likely to continue in the future, which is super cool. Totally.
• 11:45
  I think we should maybe quickly talk about pricing and packaging. So this is part of the confusion and part of the process of clarifying this is there will be the free tier. The free tier is Slack.
• 11:57
  So if you're on the free tier, which 21,000 something people are, you get access to five or sixSlack channels. Anyone is welcome to join that. Freelancers, content marketers, agencies, et cetera.
• 12:07
  Like, please come join those, hang out. There's a lot of really good stuff happening there. The paid tier will now be one single paid tier, Superpath Pro. It'll be five hundred bucks a year.
• 12:17
  You'll get obviously the ten Slack channels, which are locked just for members. You'll get the monthly one-on-ones, the Superpath socials, the...
• 12:26
  all of our library of exclusive content, of which there is actually quite a bit, and most of it is very evergreen. Going back through it, like, there's probably,
• 12:34
  I don't know, fifty, sixty, seventy things in there between courses, articles, templates, checklists, that kind of thing. And it's super valuable. Sorry to interrupt you there, but I- Yeah.
• 12:45
  I was looking at it again the other day, and it was like going through memory lane of all these courses I did that you'd put together.
• 12:50
  Like, I did them four years ago, but I went back through them, and they're just incredibly helpful.
• 12:53
  I think the reason they're so good is that most marketing educational content out there is very one-on-one, and you made all these- Mm-hmm....
• 13:01
  courses specifically to get somebody from, like, mid-career to that next level. So, like, how to report up to senior leadership. Like, how do you report on content in a way that people care about?
• 13:13
  How do you advance marketing concepts? I think there was that kind of theme to all of them.
• 13:18
  So even I read through a couple the other day as I was going through this, and I was super impressed, and I could even see my own progress. Like I'd, I'd watched three-quarters of them- [laughs]...
• 13:26
  and they're really excellent. So I think you undersell the courses for sure. But yeah, now all that will be included in the membership too, so super valuable for people if you haven't checked those out yet. Yes.
• 13:34
  Hopefully, we're just gonna continue... Not hopefully. We are gonna just continue to add more and more value to this membership.
• 13:39
  So, like, you know, as we get into events, like, there'll be heavily, heavily discounted things for paying members.
• 13:46
  Like, we're gonna continue to collect feedback and iterate on what's offered to the membership over time. Obviously, super important to be kind of hearing what people want, making it happen for them. So send us feedback.
• 13:58
  All of this also is just on the homepage now. So we've changed the website a little bit, superpath.co. Everything you need for the community is there.
• 14:06
  Obviously, we're gonna do a launch special, so for the next week, twenty percent off. They are annual-only plans. That's another change.
• 14:13
  If for some reason, for your learning and development budget, it has to be monthly or whatever, just email us. We'll help you figure it out.
• 14:18
  But the button to subscribe will be annual only, and you can use the code ErikDottie. Put it as one word. Free code. [laughs] Yeah, it'll get you twenty percent off. Um- This was Jimmy's idea, not mine, for the record.
• 14:29
  I- [laughs] Although I love it. [laughs] I think it's the most memorable code we could give people. You know, so much better than, like, LAUNCH20 or something like that. ErikDottie. So use the code ErikDottie.
• 14:39
  That'll get you twenty percent off. And then also the first ten people to sign up, we're gonna throw a Superpath beanie in the mail for you. So we need more swag out there in the world. So first ten people will get that.
• 14:49
  And then, of course, if you have any questions at all, you need clarification on anything, you have feedback, whatever, email one of us, jimmy@superpath.co, erik@superpath.co, and we'll get you taken care of.
• 14:59
  I have an email now. It's very exciting. Very official. That was the official. When I got invited to the Superpath Google Workspace. Yeah. [laughs] Game changer.
• 15:06
  [laughs] One other thing I just wanna briefly talk about is software. So it is my belief that the future of Superpath is software.
• 15:17
  Software that enables content marketers to do their jobs better, to make more money, to make their lives easier and better. And so we're actually bringing on a CTO.
• 15:25
  That's another big initiative right now, which I'll be- Mm-hmm.... talking more and more about as we get that up and running. That person is Andrew Tate. We worked together for years back at Animals.
• 15:34
  He left to start his own business, Argo, and now he's gonna be coming on to be our CTO, and he's building real software. Like, I've been doing a lot of no-code stuff for a while now. We're gonna build real software.
• 15:45
  So at some point in the not too distant future, whether you're a community member, whether you're a freelancer who's looking for new gigs, whether you're a business that needs to hire content marketers, there will be a place for you to log in and do all of those things.
• 16:00
  The first iteration of it will be a piece of software that makes all the things that we do and offer now way, way easier.
• 16:07
  Also, single sign-on, so you're not, like, jumping between Slack and all the other places right now that you would have to jump between to post a job ad, join the community, et cetera.
• 16:17
  And then there's a couple other things we're cooking up. So we'll be sharing more about that, collecting feedback, inviting people to test the beta and all that stuff pretty soon too.
• 16:25
  So all of this is now live October 2024, the first month of all the new Superpath Pro stuff. So it's all happening right now.
• 16:33
  If you're subscribing this week, you're gonna get one-on-ones, you're gonna get the invite to the social. So jump on that, get your twenty percent off. A couple people get their beanies.
• 16:41
  And Erik, also, just while you're here, seriously, thank you. Like, you've just been such an important part of the Superpath story. I can't even tell you how much I appreciate all your contributions.
• 16:51
  You were contributing so much for years and years before there was ever any official relationship. You know, like, we never paid you a dime until- For free, like an idiot. I took eternity leave.
• 17:00
  [both laughing] Hopefully, we're gonna make it up to you over time. [laughs] Now that we've- No, I've got so much value back in return. I say this all the time.
• 17:08
  I think in the first couple years I was in Superpath, like, my salary doubled. Like, I just opened my eyes to, like, competitive salary benchmarks, what opportunities were out there.
• 17:18
  I just met more people, got better connected. Like, so many inbound freelance requests came through Superpath.
• 17:24
  Just the value to my career was so huge that it, it never even was a consideration to me to, like, ask for anything else in return, 'cause I was already getting so much.
• 17:34
  That, like, that was me paying back what I had gotten, and, and so, you know, for the price of the annual membership was, was nothing in comparison to what it did for my career.
• 17:43
  So this is also just, like, a thank you to the community, and, like, I'm definitely willing to invest all this time back in it to help other people grow too. Well, we are so appreciative.
• 17:52
  You know, the community doesn't run without people supporting other people, right? Like, that's the gist of the whole thing.
• 17:57
  So thank you to everybody out there, and, uh, look forward to seeing everybody on one-on-ones, socials, and all that. And, uh, otherwise, see you in Slack. Thanks, folks.
• 18:10
  [outro music]