Latest / Content, Briefly / Authority Plug: Lashay Lewis on building a BoFu content strategy

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Authority Plug: Lashay Lewis on building a BoFu content strategy · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  You should not be doing bottom of funnel content if you do not have product market fit, like period. [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:12
  Today we're talking to LaShay Lewis. She's the founder of Authority Plug, which is a consultancy focused on helping SaaS companies create better bottom of funnel content.
• 0:21
  That in and of itself was a really interesting part of the conversation, how she got to that point, some of the positioning and messaging work she's done to help build up her own pipeline, the processes that she's put together to help companies be successful with bottom of funnel content, how she measures it.
• 0:36
  Lots of good stuff there.
• 0:37
  And in talking to a lot of SaaS companies over the last however long I've been doing this, bottom of funnel content is often forgotten, and so I really appreciate that she's thought deeply about this and come up with some great systems to help address it.
• 0:49
  Anyways, there's a whole lot there to unpack. We also talk about her LinkedIn posting, which is fantastic, and I highly recommend that you go check it out. It's a lot more than just clicks and impressions.
• 0:59
  She's actually really building her business by doing this.
• 1:02
  We also talk about her transition from working in-house to working as a consultant, which I think probably a lot of people think about or maybe aspire to, especially in today's age where the job market is so uncertain.
• 1:12
  So anyways, we cover a lot of ground here. LaShay was great. We're gonna definitely have her back on because there's more to talk about. As always, I really enjoyed this episode, and I think you will too.
• 1:23
  One last thing before we get into this episode. Would encourage everyone to go check out our paid Slack community. It's twenty bucks a month or two hundred and twenty dollars a year. You get access to ten paid channels.
• 1:33
  There's almost five hundred people that are part of that paid group now, and the conversations that are being had there are in-depth, really fascinating, stuff that you absolutely will not find on Google or anywhere else.
• 1:43
  You also get live... You also get transcripts to this podcast, and we have unlocked almost five years of this Slack group to be searched. So there's a search channel.
• 1:54
  You can go in there, ask questions, and it will query almost nine hundred thousand messages over the course of nearly five years. So would encourage folks to go check it out, superpath.co/community. Hey, everybody.
• 2:06
  Jim here from Superpath here today with LaShay Lewis. This is our first time meeting. Really excited to chat. I have six or seven bullet points.
• 2:13
  I think we could fill three episodes with some of the topics that we're gonna dive into today. Before we do all that, though, LaShay, welcome.
• 2:20
  Would you mind introducing yourself to folks who aren't already familiar with you? Sure. Hey, everybody.
• 2:24
  My name is LaShay Lewis, and I am founder of Authority Plug, B2B content marketing consultancy for growth stage SaaS startups. Awesome. So you've actually been in Superpath for a while, so I'm like kinda familiar.
• 2:38
  I know your name. But a few months ago, I was chatting with a friend, Pat Lynch, who runs content at D2L, and we were talking about bottom of the funnel content, and he said, "Have you seen LaShay Lewis's LinkedIn?"
• 2:51
  And I said, "No. I better go check it out." And he was like, "You have to. It's so good." And I did, and I'm so glad I did because you post a ton of really cool stuff there. Maybe this is a good place to start
• 3:02
  because everyone should go check out your LinkedIn. It's primarily focused on bottom of the funnel content. That's your thing. But you also create visuals for every post- Yes...
• 3:11
  which I really appreciate because from my perspective, an idea is only really a sound idea if you can draw it. Mm-hmm. You know, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm.
• 3:19
  And I feel like that really differentiates the content that you create on LinkedIn versus a lot of the other stuff I see. Yeah.
• 3:25
  I would say that's a big differentiator as well, and I always tell people, like, I know if someone is smart if they can take something complicated and simplify it because I think one of the things that most LinkedIn people, you know, do are tend to overcomplicate something to make them seem smarter.
• 3:43
  I don't wanna say than what they are. They probably are smart, but it's like they're just overcomplicating something when you...
• 3:48
  If you just break it down and people can understand it, the more they understand, the more they wanna follow you, the more people buy from you. It's just like a snowball effect.
• 3:57
  Did you start doing this when you launched Authority Plug? That's a great question. So yes and no. So I really started Authority Plug back in August of twenty twenty. Okay.
• 4:10
  And I had my first client, and it was only one client, but he was paying me like 5K a month, something like that. And I worked with him, got him great results.
• 4:20
  He kinda like fell back a little bit after a while 'cause it's one client. They're all gonna churn at some point.
• 4:25
  Fell back for a little bit, came back in September of twenty twenty-two, and I was like, "Well, let me try LinkedIn. I've been reading a lot about it, seeing Justin Welsh's course on it and things like that."
• 4:38
  And I was like, "Okay. Let me just try to, like, give this a shot."
• 4:42
  I got discouraged in December of twenty twenty-two, and I took a break, and I came back in January of twenty twenty-three and haven't stopped posting since then. Nice. What was the difference?
• 4:54
  Was it Elon Musk buying Twitter? 'Cause I feel like- [laughs]... I feel like Twitter used to be the spot- Well, here's the thing, like... for this kinda thing, and then everybody- I never-...
• 5:01
  switched over to LinkedIn at some point... mess with Twitter like that. Like, to me, it's just, yeah, it's just not my vibe to... It's like the bro energy and the- Yeah... you know what I mean?
• 5:10
  It's like that's not my thing because one of the reasons that's not my thing, and this is a whole nother, like, episode about mental health and stuff like that, it's like because I was stuck in the hustle culture for so long, and I thought that that was the way to grow a business.
• 5:24
  It was the way to scale. It was the way to do this, do that. It was like, no. [chuckles] Like, it's literally the exact opposite.
• 5:31
  So it was like that sat with me, and I was, like, kinda bitter about it, so I was like, you know, F those guys. And I went over to LinkedIn, and I was like, "You know, I like it over here. It's good.
• 5:40
  I can display my expertise." And yeah, I just kinda started putting things out from there, and that's how everything kinda began. That's awesome. Could you tell us about Authority Plug?
• 5:49
  Obviously, this is your consultancy, but, like, tell us about the origin story, what kinda work you do, the customers you work with, that kinda thing. Yeah.
• 5:56
  So the origin story of Authority Plug comes from my struggles of being an in-house content marketer.
• 6:03
  So when I was in-houseI worked well, really, I worked across a couple different agencies and one of the things I noticed was that they were hyper-focused on traffic and not focused on leads. I also didn't like
• 6:19
  the vibe that agencies gave where it was almost like smoke and mirrors reporting and like putting junior putting juniors on like senior level accounts and enterprise accounts and things like that, and I'm just like, "This isn't my vibe."
• 6:31
  So had to do that for probably close to 10 years between in-house and doing across agencies. Mm-hmm. So from there,
• 6:41
  I wanted to work for one last agency before I started my own thing, and I didn't get the job at the agency because I didn't know how to write product-led content right.
• 6:55
  I didn't know how to write content that converts, and it was just the knowledge gap between the two were so big, I just couldn't do it, and I didn't make the cut. But one of the founders really took me under his wing and
• 7:10
  like talked me through editing and things like that, and it was like from there, that's when I was like, "Okay, I have to..." So my husband actually convinced me to do this.
• 7:18
  He was like, "I know you wanna do the entrepreneur thing, but you might need to take a step back and go in-house." And that was the best thing I could have ever did, 'cause I went back in-house.
• 7:28
  I was at a 75K a year salary, and it was okay at first, right? 'Cause that was the most I've ever been paid up until that point to be anything in content marketing. And that might not just be a universal thing.
• 7:42
  That might be a me thing, right? Maybe I didn't ask for the raises I should've asked for, but that was the most I had ever made up until that point being a content marketer.
• 7:51
  And that was in-house at a SaaS company or at a different agency? No, so this was actually an affiliate company. Okay.
• 7:58
  So it's almost like in the advertising space, but that bottom of funnel methodology can still apply really to almost any category.
• 8:07
  So I was able to just take that methodology and take it to them and be able to get them good results, but it's like after, you know, that two-year mark or coming up on that two-year mark, and it was like there weren't any raises on the horizon or anything like that.
• 8:18
  I was like, "Yeah, it's probably time to like do something different." And then, again, in September '22, that's when I started posting and then fell back, came back January of 2023, and then kept going around...
• 8:34
  So I got on the Exit Five podcast around, I think it aired April of 2023, and I signed my first two clients from there. No way. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
• 8:48
  That was enough for me to go ahead and say, "Okay, I'm gonna step back from the job," 'cause I wasn't making that much, right?
• 8:53
  It didn't take much for me to be like, "Okay, let me step back from this job and go full in on consulting." Yeah. And that's how it started. That's awesome.
• 9:00
  Well, actually Dave Gerhardt is gonna be on the podcast a couple episodes from now- Ooh... uh, which I'm very excited about. [laughs] What's up, Dave? [laughs] That's fantastic. So you left the job.
• 9:08
  You've been working on Authority Plug full time since then. Yes. Very cool. How is it going? Amazing. So it's been crazy. It started pretty rough because I had to find my positioning.
• 9:21
  I was coming from in-house, and I was like, "Oh my gosh," like, "How do I do this?" And the trickiest part has been the positioning by far. Out of everything else I've done, sales, marketing, that positioning. So the way
• 9:36
  I went to market with this was just kinda like at first I was saying a fractional strategist, but I found out that they don't call it that, so I can't call it that.
• 9:45
  Fractional is almost more of like starting to become more popular, but it's almost like a internal term. Mm. It's like- Right... that's how we use it to identify what we do. So
• 9:56
  I name myself a content strategy advisor, and I started putting up like, you know, I said I was like doing bottom of funnel content and things like that.
• 10:04
  Came across two guys on LinkedIn, Anthony Pieri and Rob Kaminsky, two really, really smart product marketers, and they started helping me understand product marketing, 'cause as someone in content, I wasn't in product like that because, again, one of the problems with companies is that their teams are siloed and the communication is siloed.
• 10:26
  Mm-hmm. So it's like as a content marketer, I didn't get to dive into sales and into product and into all this stuff.
• 10:31
  So I was learning about product marketing from them, and I seen that they put up a visual, and it was really, really good. And I'm like, "Ooh, I understand this. Maybe I'm a visual learner. Hmm."
• 10:42
  So I took one of their visuals and broke it down in a way that I could understand for content strategy, and I started putting them out, and then the audience just started growing from there.
• 10:53
  There's a next milestone, but I'll wait for you to ask me for that one. [laughs] There's another one after. [laughs] You know, I, I'm fascinated to hear you say that the positioning was challenging.
• 11:01
  It makes sense, though. Like many years ago, Greg Ciotti, who's one of my content marketing heroes, wrote a blog post, I think it was called Easy Reading Is Damn Hard Writing, something like that.
• 11:10
  So it's like when you read something- Yeah... and it's like, it flows and it's... The writer makes it look easy, but it wasn't. And I feel like your- Yeah...
• 11:17
  positioning sounds like it maybe fits that framework because when you see the stuff you put on LinkedIn, it's like, oh, LaShay, yeah, she does bottom of funnel stuff. Like, go look at her stuff. It's really good.
• 11:26
  You know? But I can appreciate that it wasn't just like you snapped your fingers and there it is. Like, [laughs] here's your positioning. Here's your messaging. Yeah.
• 11:33
  Like, it was, it was, it was tricky because when I came on LinkedIn, I didn't see a whole lot of people saying bottom of funnel or BOFU or anything like that. And I'm not saying I created the category or anything.
• 11:44
  Like, it's been a term, but it's like nobody attached themselves to that term, and I was like, okay, so I do do bottom of funnel.
• 11:52
  And I was thinking, like, the previous agency I worked for, they were having really good success with it. So I was like, okay, let me see if I can, like, go to market as a consultant doing bottom of funnel stuff.
• 12:05
  From there, I had put out a LinkedIn post, and the post was... It was a content dashboard, and I was telling people, like-One of the biggest problems I had, like, as an in-house marketer was information consolidation.
• 12:19
  It was like stuff is everywhere. I gotta go look at a YouTube video. I gotta go in G Docs. I gotta go to the, this team. If I had all the information I needed consolidated, I probably would've gotten that job.
• 12:31
  And I always think about that, and it bothered me so much that I was like, you know what? I'm gonna build something where it's like it would've helped me out. You know what I mean?
• 12:40
  And, uh, and I didn't know it at the time. I was just, like, building stuff, but if I had something like that when I was in-house, it would've helped me out so much, right?
• 12:47
  So I was like, okay, let me just put this up here 'cause fun fact, I put the dashboard out one time, and it got three likes. So I was like, okay.
• 12:58
  You know, two or three months later, my audience was a little tiny bit bigger. I was like, okay, let me put this thing out again. And it got maybe, like, three hundred and fifty- Whoa... likes, two hundred... Yeah.
• 13:08
  So that to me, that was my opening. So when I reached out to Dave from Exit Five, I let him know, like, "Hey, I would love to be on the show. I'm on your LinkedIn from time to time.
• 13:20
  I came out with this dashboard, and people seem to love it. These are the problems I had as an in-house content marketer. Would love to come talk about it." And he was like, "I would love to have you."
• 13:28
  And then from there it was just like- That's great... yeah. The dashboard is, is great too.
• 13:33
  As I was doing some research and reading your LinkedIn post before this episode, I filled out the form, got the dashboard, and I can verify it's really good.
• 13:42
  And there's so much good information in there, and yeah, it got me... Actually, as I was doing it, I was like, "We should use this," because I have the same problem at Superpath.
• 13:50
  Like, I don't-- everything's all over the place. Mm. Even though it's just me- Yeah... it's hard to keep track of all of it. Yeah. For sure. What is the impact of consistent LinkedIn posting done for the business?
• 14:01
  Everything. The thing is, getting on Dave's pod was, like, the launch pad. It was an extremely huge launch pad, right? 'Cause that was my first time ever doing a podcast.
• 14:13
  So it was a big launch pad for me, but there's a difference between attention and then monetizing that attention, right?
• 14:20
  So I could've gotten all the attention in the world from the podcast, but it was like, how was I going to monetize that and build something from it?
• 14:27
  So I went on the show, and I'm like, let me talk about the thing that I love to talk about, the thing that I know about, which is bottom of funnel content, and I'm, you know, I'm going on here risking a-- You know, 'cause I'm like, I'm coming up here with a contrarian opinion.
• 14:42
  Nobody talks about this. A lot of consultants are not on the show. I'm just like, they're probably gonna be like, "Who the hell is this girl?" Right?
• 14:47
  Like, so it was intimidating, but the reaction I got from the show was just, like, overwhelming to the point where Dave was like, "Come back on the show. We're gonna talk about it again." Awesome.
• 15:02
  And I've been on there, like, three more times- Oh, no way... since then on, like, other live webinars and stuff like that.
• 15:07
  But it was like, yeah, like that was the me getting on the show, talking about the thing that I do brought the right type of attention.
• 15:16
  And then what happened was once they seen that attention, like once they followed me on LinkedIn, they seen the visuals which broke down exactly what I did in a way that they can understand.
• 15:26
  'Cause it's like, again, when you step out as a consultant, you're not just selling to one person. Like, you have a champion, and then you have a person that signs the check.
• 15:34
  Like, you have to break it down, and you have to think about it like if a content marketer took this to their VP of marketing, would their VP of marketing be able to conceptualize this?
• 15:43
  And that's how I think about things, and I think that's one of the reasons why the content does so well and that it does well with, like, lead flow and things like that is because I'm simplifying nuance.
• 15:54
  'Cause bottom of funnel is very nuanced. It's confusing. It's...
• 15:57
  And it's why I lost what I thought at the time would've been an amazing opportunity, but now that I think about it, if I wouldn't have lost that opportunity, I wouldn't have probably come out with a dashboard.
• 16:07
  I wouldn't have done anything that I've done up until this point. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. What do you think it is about bottom of funnel content?
• 16:13
  I mean, you've nailed the positioning, which I think is really helpful. You present it in a very, like, clean, visual way. It's great.
• 16:21
  Actually, I wanna ask you about how you make those visuals too, but is there something you think about the, about BOFU content that you think really resonates with content folks when they read it?
• 16:30
  Like, do they read it and be like, "Oh,
• 16:32
  that's why it isn't working, because we just chase keywords," or, "Oh, there's this whole, like, unfilled category of content we've never created," or like, "Oh, like, we can't do this in-house because it's, like, too complicated and too much bureaucracy"?
• 16:45
  All of that, right? And it's almost like it's pulling a veil from over them 'cause it's like...
• 16:52
  And I say a veil because they can see, but it's blurry, and it's blurry because they have everybody telling them, they have the higher-ups telling them, their coworkers tell, "Okay, we need to focus on this because it has the most traffic, and it has the most volume."
• 17:05
  And they have their thoughts and opinions on it, and a lot of their thoughts and opinions are similar to mine. We need to start bottom of funnel, not go after the high traffic play.
• 17:14
  But it's like they don't have anybody to advocate for them. They don't have that voice of like-- versus if they go to LinkedIn, and oh, look what LaShay says. She has X amount of followers, and you know what I mean?
• 17:25
  It's like, and again, that's not me patting myself on the back, but that, that's just me, like, being 100% real. This is what happens when people come to me, and I'm just like, wow.
• 17:34
  Like, the thing is about the visuals, they make it easier for me to understand. It just happens that other people love them too.
• 17:42
  So it's like, again, the easier you can, like, get something across to someone, the easier it's gonna be for them to say, "Okay, I want this."
• 17:51
  And it's like with them, I'm just, I'm just saying everything that they've been thinking. That's it. Yeah. But you give them the words. Like bottom of funnel... Yes. Like, bottom of funnel does work. It does convert.
• 18:02
  You cannot source the information from Google. Like, I'm just really validating everything they probably already know. Yeah. That's so-- Just takeaway, takeaway for listeners.
• 18:10
  I'm gonna oversimplify this, but what you're describing to me is
• 18:14
  perfect thought leadership strategy, where it's like you have to give people the words to say the thing that they kind of getYou give them the words, that gives you then the ownership of that category- Yep... or topic.
• 18:29
  So I feel like there's- Yep... a lot to take away from that. And that's the thing, like, and that's the thing, it's like the word ownership is a little bit like oof, but it's so true, right? It's like
• 18:40
  when you hear bottom of funnel, who do you think of? Yeah. I, I guess association- You know what I mean?... is a better word than ownership. Like- Yeah. But you're totally spot on. It's like,
• 18:48
  and now I'm starting to see like more and more people with the bottom of funnel thing, but it's like, and that's okay, but it's like I would still say like work through that positioning 'cause it wasn't an overnight- Yeah...
• 18:57
  like, oh, I'm just gonna put BOFU in my headline, and it was, it took a lot of like iteration and twisting and turning and things like that. And then also to build a system in conjunction with what I'm teaching.
• 19:10
  So I didn't get, I guess we didn't get to that part yet, but I actually advise companies in that dashboard. Got it. Meaning they get the dashboard, you provide the dashboard, and then that becomes- Yep...
• 19:20
  kinda like the basis for how you work together. Like you run through the various steps, the customer research, the positioning, the content- Yes... creation, et cetera. Yep. Very cool. How do you create the visuals?
• 19:30
  [laughs] I, and I'm curious because I- [laughs]... I, I'm into visuals, and I don't do it as much anymore, but back when I was- Yeah...
• 19:37
  writing for the Animals blog, we always tried to have a visual in every piece kind of for the same reason- Mm... as you.
• 19:42
  It's like by the time I've thought through it and feel like I understand it, I can kind of sketch out this thing, and then that makes it easier for someone to understand.
• 19:50
  Not to mention, it's better to show on social and things like that. So like- Yeah...
• 19:54
  not only like what tools do you use, but like how do you go about the, the process of taking an idea and then iterating on it, kind of probably beating it up a little bit to get it to that point? That's a great question.
• 20:04
  So I was bouncing between two tools for the visuals. So at first I was using Miro or Miro. Oh, yeah.
• 20:13
  I was using that at first, and then actually I was using Figma first, and then I switched over to Miro, and then I switched back to Figma. So the visuals that I've been putting out lately have been on Figma. And
• 20:27
  the way I do it, it's tricky 'cause it's like...
• 20:31
  And I always tell people this that ask me for courses and stuff, 'cause I'm like, it's hard for me to like put my thoughts not in a box, but like articulate my thoughts 'cause it's really just like a long stream of- Yeah, yeah, yeah...
• 20:41
  consciousness a lot of the time. So the, how I do it is I start like thinking about the process in my head first. I'm like, "Okay, how would I approach this?"
• 20:51
  And then I just try to start drawing out visually, and sometimes I just let my mind kinda wander with it a little bit and not be so like, "Okay, this has to look like this."
• 21:01
  So I think about how I would conduct a strategy. Like, so for example, if I'm coming into a SaaS company and we're looking at the strategy from like a 10,000-foot view,
• 21:13
  there's a couple different ways we could break it down, right? We could break it down by use case. We could break it down by product. We could break it down by industry segment.
• 21:21
  So when I think about it like that, so what I'll do is I'll go into Figma and start drawing like a board and separate it out by like use case and ICP and things like that, and it's like
• 21:34
  even the way I do my consulting is very similar. It has a visual element to it. So the first dashboard that I give to everybody, that's not the version that's out...
• 21:46
  Well, that's not the version that I'm using to consult clients in. Got it. So that V1 has grown into a V2 that's a little bit more productized, and it's very similar to what I use with my clients.
• 21:57
  Like it's very visual, and I think that sometimes I'm in a slump, right?
• 22:02
  Like, I don't always have like millions of visuals just like lined up, but I think like when I start working with clients like on the consulting end, and I do like, "Ooh, that was good. Let me..."
• 22:13
  And then I'll just open Figma and just start to visualize out, okay, how did I do this? 'Cause sometimes it's not always like I gotta go in the brain bank and get it. It's like I gotta do the thing- Yeah...
• 22:23
  and then come back and document how I did it. I just document it visually versus like writing it down 'cause I'm a visual learner. But it's like do the thing, learn the thing, and then teach it.
• 22:36
  So it's like, but you're doing it in a visual way, and that's the part that's like tricky. But again, for me, I just think about how I do it, and then I just try to like put shapes and things with that.
• 22:46
  And I say shapes because that's what my visuals are. It's squares and cubes and all this other stuff.
• 22:51
  But it's like, again, even with the cube visual I put out the other day, it's like when I think about content strategy, it's like different segments.
• 23:00
  I'm like, okay, what if I just put those different segments into a cube? One side of the cube is ICP, the other one is buyer sup- Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like you'll get better with it.
• 23:09
  It's just about repetition. Like, as you keep doing it, as you keep getting your thoughts down, you're gonna get really, really good.
• 23:15
  If somebody wants to go back and look at the first carousel I ever did compared to the last carousel I did, you're gonna be like, "Holy smokes." [laughs] Yeah, yeah. The, the BOFU cubes piece was really good.
• 23:26
  As you're describing this, I can imagine there's all this thought and experience and stuff that goes into getting it to the point where, okay, now it's this simple concept. Here's a visual.
• 23:37
  That now makes it easy to get it out to people, right? And then I can totally see how champion in a company brings it to their team and says, "We need BOFU cubes.
• 23:47
  This is the thing that ties together all these challenges we've had." Then- Mm. Yeah... you, you get in there, and it's like all the work that got you to that point, you now open back up.
• 23:56
  Like, you've already thought through. So there's like, as you create it, you're sort of building the frameworks, thinking through the customer problems- Yes... and then you kind of like unpack it- Yep...
• 24:05
  again once you're on the customer side. That's kinda how I imagine it anyways. That's exactly how I do it, right?
• 24:11
  So if I'm consulting clients and I'm consulting in them in this dashboard and it's in Notion right now and stuff like that, it's like I'm building things into it that they tell me they need. Not everything, right?
• 24:22
  But if they're like, "Okay, we need a workboard here," or, "This looks-"I'll build that into it. To me, that's like beginning stages of like product development.
• 24:30
  That's how I look at it so it's almost like I'm doing consulting within this dashboard, but I'm also simultaneous, like kinda building a product in the background. Mm. Oh, cool. So it's like yeah.
• 24:41
  So I think having them in there is helpful for me because it keeps my scope within that dashboard.
• 24:48
  So it's like if they're like, "Oh, LaShay, we need help with webinars and this," and then I'm like, "No, I do this right here." Yeah, yeah. Just the bottom of funnel stuff, right?
• 24:56
  So I think for any consultants, I would say, like, getting your clients in a workspace is gonna be super, super important, not just to let them know your scope of work, but to also not have to be on a ton of calls either, right?
• 25:10
  So a lot of my advising with clients is async, and it's just me walking them through, "Okay, here's how we do this. Here's how we do that." I'm not on a lot of calls, right? So...
• 25:20
  And again, this is just my positioning against agencies. Like, the heavy meeting environment and things like that, I'm just like, I wanna position against everything I did not like when I was in-house. That's awesome.
• 25:32
  You know, I, I saw that you posted recently about productizing the service.
• 25:36
  That did stand out to me because in order to productize a service, it has to be, it has to be fairly narrow, meaning kind of exactly what you just said. Mm-hmm.
• 25:45
  You can't get in there and then be like, "Oh, we'll do this, and we'll do some of that and sprinkle this." You can't do that because then it's... You're right. Yeah. You're on calls.
• 25:50
  You're like, it becomes this whole other thing. So I found that to be super interesting that, like, you've got this thing. It's working.
• 25:57
  It actually reminds me a bit of, um, I don't know if you follow Joel Klettke at all, who created- No... Case Study Buddy. He's kinda like the LaSh- LaShay Lewis- Oh, I do know... of case studies, you know?
• 26:07
  [chuckles] That's crazy. I recognize the name of the company before I recognized his name. Yeah. It works then. Wild. But yes, I know exactly who you're talking about. Yeah, very cool. How technical are you?
• 26:17
  You know, are you like an automation whiz? Like, how do you think about building the processes and tools and all that to kinda make all this work smoothly? That's a great question. So I am not technical.
• 26:31
  I don't even like technical SEO. Like, [chuckles] I stay away from it. But how I thought about this was I'm like, okay, I need a repeatable system to be able to take people through.
• 26:43
  So just to let everybody know, and I'm just being dead honest, like, I'm kinda lazy. Like, I don't wanna... I've been in content for 15 years. Like, I'm tired at this point.
• 26:52
  So I'm like, okay, how can I give my clients the most amount of value with the least amount of work? And I'm like, okay, you know, let me build this for them, and let me, like, advise them through it.
• 27:04
  And then, like, from there, I started noticing, like, okay, they're running into the same issues here. There's a snag there. Let's fix this. I'm like, okay. Now when I hooked up with someone in ops,
• 27:16
  that's when everything changed. It was like, okay, 'cause an ops professional can take your process out of your head and put it down on paper and, like, get a system going with it.
• 27:26
  So once I, you know, let him in and I let him start seeing, like, okay, here's what I do first, second, third, fourth, it's just about building a system around that so every client goes through the same thing over and over and over.
• 27:38
  Yeah. That's aw- Um... so you actually brought someone in to help you with thinking through the process, documentation? I did. So here's the thing, and I would, I would say this for any other aspiring consultants.
• 27:51
  I brought in a closer too early. So what happened was I got some traction from the show, and, like, my cal was booked. And I'm like, "Oh, this is stressing me out."
• 28:03
  But the problem was it was either companies that were too big, and the sales cycle was gonna be extremely too long, or it was companies that were too small, founders that didn't have the money.
• 28:14
  And again, this ties back to a positioning issue. It's like when you target...
• 28:18
  And I'm probably cutting months for somebody that's gonna take this and run with it, but if you target CMOs, you're gonna get the bigger companies, longer sales cycles, messy internals. Oh, interesting.
• 28:30
  If you target too far beginner-ish, like founder, they're not gonna have the money. They're not gonna have product market fit. It's just not gonna be good. Right in the middle is like
• 28:42
  seed, Series A, Series B, like in that range, 'cause it's like they're not too big to the point where you can't talk to the sales team and the product team, and you guys come together, but they're not small enough where it's like they don't have five, six, whatever, thousand dollars a month to pay you.
• 28:59
  Right. Right? So that's something I would say, too.
• 29:02
  Like, just be very cognizant of who you wanna work with and how much money you're trying to get because the companies I work with are funded, and that was another reason for me moving from e-com to B2B.
• 29:14
  I'm like, "Ugh, it's just so much money in B2B. It's just so boring. I don't know how I'm gonna do it." But you just add a little bit of spice to it, you know? Make it fun, make it exciting.
• 29:22
  And I think that's another thing, too. It's like a lot of people say the same stuff over and over, and it's so boring, and it's just like add some spice to it, you know? Bring some fun to it. You know what I mean?
• 29:32
  So I've got some stuff in the works as relates to that, but I would say yeah. It's like I've just take them through the same thing every single time, and once you do that, you start to see the holes in the process.
• 29:43
  And then when you fill those up, you're like, "I'm probably building a product here." That's really cool. That's really cool. Without giving away your secret sauce, like,
• 29:52
  what do you see-- what are these companies experiencing with bottom-of-funnel content? Like, what prompts them? When do they have the moment of like, "We need this," you know?
• 30:00
  And then once you get in, like, is there, like, a couple things that you find, like an overinvestment in top-of-funnel stuff or, like, lack of alignment on teams or... You know?
• 30:08
  Like, what prevents them from tackling the bottom-of-funnel problem? Yeah. So the thing I probably hear the most on sales calls is, "We've been focusing on top of funnel,
• 30:23
  but we're not seeing any leads."And we had this one article that was doing well, but we don't know why and I tried this thing where I wrote around a keyword that had like 10 searches a month and we're getting demos from it, and I don't--
• 30:40
  That's like what I hear the most, the problems that they have is that the internal teams are not communicating with one another.
• 30:47
  So it's like marketing doesn't know what's going on with sales, sales doesn't know what's going on with product.
• 30:51
  It's like, and what the dashboard solves is that it consolidates that information so we can get clear on messaging and positioning before we even touch bottom of funnel content. Yeah.
• 31:00
  Because-- And here's another thing I haven't said, I haven't put a LinkedIn post up about it yet, but you should not be doing bottom of funnel content if you do not have product market fit, like period.
• 31:12
  And this is just from me being in-house across agencies, like consulting, like don't do bottom of fu- you need to have your product market fit first. So for anybody that's, you know,
• 31:24
  wanting to do the consulting thing, like let's, for example, you can really take any part of the funnel you want and build a consultancy around it. So like if you wanted a consultancy around top of funnel
• 31:34
  , you know what I mean?
• 31:35
  I just chose bottom of funnel 'cause that's my thing and it's really tricky to nail, and I'm like, I know if I can nail this, number one, I'm gonna be a GOAT, and then number two, I'm gonna make a lot of money. Yeah.
• 31:48
  Well- So I was like, okay, let me dive in here. But it's not easy. Like it's complicated, it's nuanced, but I'm like,
• 31:55
  the clients give me that feedback loop, and Dave Gerhardt talks about this all the time with his community. He's like, "The most undervalued part is the feedback loop," and that's what the clients give to me.
• 32:04
  The thing is sitting on top of Notion right now for now, but it's like they're telling me what they want in it. Like, "Okay, I want a workboard here. Can we do this? Can the templates..."
• 32:14
  So it's like they're telling me what product they want. Yeah. I'm just building what they want. That's awesome. That's really cool.
• 32:20
  I think your timing here is really good too because, and I would imagine it's probably part of your positioning, it's like the prevailing winds of SEO are pushing us in a new direction. Yeah. Top of funnel,
• 32:33
  I don't know what top of funnel looks like 12 months from now. I really don't. And there's like generative AI- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm... is a factor now, and it's like, and I would imagine- Right...
• 32:40
  a lot of companies are like, "Okay, there's a lot of uncertainty with our top of funnel stuff. We need customers though," right?
• 32:46
  So like, what could we do with our existing traffic or our existing email list, and like where does bottom of funnel content fit in, because that's like much more kind of safe from the SEO- Yeah...
• 32:57
  fluctuations, AI, et cetera. Oh, for sure. Not just that though, but another thing is the ROI on bottom of funnel content is so ridiculously larger than other things. It's like...
• 33:12
  And that's why I tell companies, I'm like, "You don't have to do 50 pieces a month. This is not top of funnel. We're not going for an engagement volume click impression play.
• 33:22
  We're going for a conversion play, so we need to slow down and really nail this positioning in this piece, talk about the features, and do the feature mapping, and all this stuff like that."
• 33:31
  But it's like that's the tricky part for them, and that's the gap that I fill. But I wanna wait until you ask, but there's a gap I've seen in the market with bottom of funnel for years now.
• 33:43
  So since I've started working on it, I'm like, again, going back to the, the software thing, I'm like, if I can fill this gap, ugh, game over. Yeah. That's so cool.
• 33:52
  I really appreciate that you've built a business that focuses on things you like to do, avoids the things you don't like to do, and then makes it really easy for you to prove the value of the work. Like re- Yeah...
• 34:02
  content reporting is a disaster. You know, like this, this comes up in- Oh, bad... the Slack community all the time. It's like, well, what metrics do you do, you measure, and like what tools do you use?
• 34:10
  And like how do you-- then like how do you prove it to the CMO, which like you can't really usually. But you're right. Yeah. The bottom of the funnel content is different.
• 34:17
  Because it's focused on conversion, it's, I would imagine...
• 34:19
  I've never gone like super deep down this rabbit hole, but I would imagine it's a lot, a lot easier to attribute the creation of bottom of funnel content and the strategy behind it to customers and dollars.
• 34:31
  Oh, 100%, and the reason it is is because it's the closest conversion point, right?
• 34:37
  It's like if you write a top of funnel piece and let's say somebody hits it and they download your white paper or whatever, you have to follow that person for probably three to six months, however long your sales cycle is, especially if we're dealing with enterprise products.
• 34:50
  Like, you're gonna have to try to track that person across what podcast they listen to, because here's another thing.
• 34:56
  It's like people scream like, "Oh, the funnel's dead," and I'm like, okay, it's not that the buying cycle is that linear, it's that that's how we conceptualize buckets to put people in based on where they are mentally in the buyer's journey.
• 35:11
  Right. Right? So it's like bottom of funnel, they are mentally ready to make a decision.
• 35:15
  Now they're just trying to compare you and a different competitor to see who's the best, and it's like best is subjective, and I get this all the time. It's like people are like, "Oh, well, we're not the best."
• 35:26
  Well, you know, what if we talk about this per- I'm like, best is a subjective term. If you think you're the best, make your case why you're the best. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?
• 35:34
  It's like you don't have to shade anybody else. You don't have to talk down on another competitor. You just talk about what you do really well. So,
• 35:43
  and I'm probably spilling too much, Jimmy, but to give you an example, right, if there was a software that helped teams create bottom of funnel content,
• 35:55
  if I were to do a comparison page on that, I wouldn't trash Jasper, right? Like I would say, "Here's what Jasper does, and here's what this does," right?
• 36:08
  So it's like and the people that need bottom of funnel will go with this one, the people that need more of like a volume, high, you know, top of funnel play will go with Jasper. Right. Right?
• 36:18
  And it's almost a method of self-selection on the prospect's end, 'cause if you let them know, you know, what you have to offer, they're gonna make the decision like, "Okay, this is for me," or, "This is not for me."
• 36:30
  You're just filtering.Articles are literally just a filter for sales. It's like the person reads it, they're like, "Ooh, this is great," "Ooh, this sucks." Yeah. You know what I mean?
• 36:38
  It's like if it is good, they get to sales, they're already pre-warm up. Yeah, yeah. That makes total sense. You teased a gap that you found in bottom of funnel. [chuckles] Do you wanna talk about it?
• 36:50
  We can talk about it. [laughs] It's okay. If you don't want to, it's okay. No, no, no. We could, we could talk about it. So the gap I've seen with in the content marketing industry in general is that
• 37:05
  all of the AIs out right now are great at writing top of funnel, maybe even some middle of funnel content, right?
• 37:14
  Because what AI does is it pulls information from other places on the internet and brings it together, and it writes you an article.
• 37:22
  The problem with AI is that it doesn't know your customer, it doesn't know your audience segments, their habits, their whatever. So when you try to write a bottom of funnel piece in Jasper or in any other tool,
• 37:36
  it doesn't come out with the subjectivity that you would want it to come out with because they're pulling information from Google, and your company's most important information is not found in Google, it's found within your organization, right?
• 37:49
  So that's the gap I'm seeing right now, is just like AI can't write bottom of funnel content how it needs to be written. It doesn't understand the nuances and things like that. So that's, that's an open- I love that.
• 38:07
  Yeah. You're totally right.
• 38:08
  Actually, one of the things we tried to sell at Animals, I think I even wrote a blog post on this idea, kind of a related idea, something like unlocking internal expertise is, like, a great way to create more content.
• 38:19
  Um, something... But just exactly what you said, it's like all the good stuff, it's in a... someone's notes, in a PowerPoint. Yes. It's, but it's not easily indexable. So that's good. I like that. Yes. Yeah.
• 38:32
  Do you write at all? Because I imagine, like, you go through this process with a customer, then there's a bunch of content that has to be written. Do you do it? Do you have team that does it?
• 38:39
  Do you refer that stuff out to someone else, or do they do it in-house? That's a great question. So I don't write anything. I've always hated writing. I think I'm a terrible writer. [chuckles] So their team writes.
• 38:55
  And the reason I like it like that most of the time is because usually they have journalists on the team, and it's like journalists are some of the best writers you will find, and I was kinda jealous I didn't have any journalism experience 'cause I was like, damn, if I did, if I had, like, that journalism experience with that strategy, I would've been, like, totally unstoppable.
• 39:15
  Right. But I had the strategy with no, like, journalism, and the people in-house have the journalism with no strategy.
• 39:21
  So it's like when you combine those two together, you get really, really good bottom of funnel content because it's almost like journalistic style writing.
• 39:29
  It's like you go to the SME on the product team, and you're like, "Okay, what does this feature do? How does it do it? How does it accomplish, like, the job to be done?"
• 39:37
  Again, it's almost like you're interviewing your subject matter experts. That's where the journalism piece comes in, and writers with journalism as a background just tend to be more factual with their writing.
• 39:48
  There's less fluff. And I'm like, I realized two years ago, like, journalists are some of the best writers to work with.
• 39:55
  So if there's anybody in the community, and I'm sure there is, that is a journalist, there's a clear opening for you to get in somewhere and probably be able to make some pretty good money.
• 40:07
  It's just you probably need to dive in on the strategy part a little bit. But honestly, to me, the journalism part is harder than the strategy part. I'm not even gonna lie to you.
• 40:18
  And again, that's probably just how I feel about it, but it's like writing is just so tricky for me. I just can't... So I like to pair with other people, but what I do is, like, I use frameworks for them.
• 40:29
  So over doing this for 15 years, I've found maybe... Oh boy, I don't even know how many frameworks I have now, but I'm advising on five frameworks as of now, and I even have two included in the free dashboard. So
• 40:43
  I advise on those frameworks, and I just teach them how to fill those in based on their benefits, their products, their features, the pain points, and really, again, just teaching them, like, about that messaging and positioning and, like, that's how I advise them.
• 40:57
  I don't write anything. Yeah. I think you're doing it right. Writing-- Well, you can't run a product or service that includes much, if any, writing. Because writing is slow, it's time intensive. Yeah.
• 41:08
  You have to have an editor, you go back and forth. It's like- Yeah, it's like the tone of voice thing. It's like too many... And I'm sorry to cut you off, but it was like that feel that.
• 41:16
  It's like, oh, the tone of voice, and oh, this, and oh, that. I'm like, nope. [chuckles] Yeah. We're not even doing that. That's all your thing. All you need to do is make sure you get these points into the piece.
• 41:26
  It can stay your voice- Yeah... your style. Just make sure you talk about these core components. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah. LaShay, there's so much...
• 41:34
  Like, we could probably go on for another, like, two hours. I would love to have you back if you're open to it. I just feel like there's so much- I would love to come back... to talk about here. Yes.
• 41:42
  [chuckles] Um, I would really encourage people listening to go check out your LinkedIn, and I'll put a link in the show notes to make that easy. And also Authority Plug, which is authorityplug.com, right?
• 41:52
  Yes, authorityplug.com, or you can go to authorityplug.com/content-dashboard if you wanna grab the dashboard. It's totally free.
• 42:02
  I think the cool thing about the dashboard that I can say now, that it will be a public version of V1 of the software that comes out later on. I love it. So you guys get to see it built in public. That's so cool. I...
• 42:14
  And like I said, I checked it out earlier. It is very good. Absolutely worth checking out. LaShay, seriously, thank you so much. It's wonderful to meet you, and I hope we can make this- It's great to meet you...
• 42:24
  a regular thing. Of course. I would love to come back. If the, if the community would like to have me, I would love to be here. [chuckles] I think they will. I think they will. Awesome. Well, thanks again, and take care.
• 42:37
  [outro music]