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Turn a Book Into Business (Patrick Moorhead and Jamie Schneiderman) · Unstuck Pod

• Jamie: Hi everyone, welcome to the Unstuck Pod. excited today to have Patrick Moorhead here. Patrick's got a range of ⁓ past experiences, current experiences, and ⁓ really to have him share and give us of his thoughts. So thanks, Patrick, for coming. Patrick Moorhead: Thank you, Jamie. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Jamie: Yeah you bet. let's start this way. What's the that you've had? Because I think it's I think it's interesting. ⁓ and then tell everybody from there up to sort of now what do you do and then what are Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. I'm old, so I'll try to pack that whole historical text into into ⁓ two or three minutes. you know, I I was born in the 70s, and so when I graduated from college, the internet was new. And so I got into digital marketing business. I describe it as through the back door. I really think I got on the elevator in the basement. In the mid-90s, I started out teaching myself how to code HTML and JavaScript and Flash and Macromedia tools and ⁓ and I managed to find a way to make money design skills to to build websites and CD-ROMs and and banner ads. that led me to ⁓ working big agencies. And so I spent a number of years working at Avenue A, which became Razorfish, which became Aquantive, which became Microsoft. after that, I spent a number of years working at Focone Building. ⁓ or draft FCB as it was known at the time. And now it's back to being known as FCB, which is a huge traditional global agency working on clients like State Farm, KFC, Milk. We did the Milk Mustache campaign there. I learned a lot about advertising and marketing strategy, brand planning was a key area for me. Always in digital, though. So what was the digital angle? Eventually I realized that the people that were having the real fun and making the real money. ⁓ were the people on the product technology side. So I abandoned the advertising industry and took a few steps back in my career and took a sales job at a company called Catalina Marketing, which is a digital which is a data marketing company for consumer package goods. and not not many people know them, but everyone uses them. They're the ones that print these long strip coupons at the check stand at the grocery store that the cashier hands to you with your receipt. So that's actually built on a massive proprietary purchase data environment with personalized targeting engines behind it. I got to work with that set of data on building mobile advertising networks. That me to a job at Twitter where I was able to leverage that skill into building a similar type of purchase data-based ad targeting technology ⁓ at on behalf of Walmart. At that after about two and a half years in that role, I got a call from my longtime mentor and advisor who invited me to join him as CMO at a 20-person startup company in Chicago called Label Insight. and I did, took advantage of that. That was my first CMO job. and I worked there for nearly four years, and we grew that company from 2 million in revenue to over 22 million in revenue and eventually sold it to Nielsen. and then my last gig was The same job, bigger company. So I became the CMO of a company called PriceFX. ⁓ at the time I joined them, they were sitting at seven million annual revenue. It was an enterprise B2B price optimization platform. and over a period of six years, I helped that company grow from 7 million in revenue to 72 million in revenue and built a 14-person marketing team along the way. I left that job at the end of 24 and decided to try my hand at being an entrepreneur. and so in the beginning of 2025, which is just ⁓ 18 months ago, although it feels like five years, I started two businesses. One is called the Sovereign CMO. That's my fractional CMO and marketing advisory practice, where I work with a handful of clients at a time on topics like AI automation, AI visibility, how to use AI tools to maximize the people that they have, upskill the people they have, ⁓ and ch triple, quadruple. The output that they can deliver without compromising on quality. And then the other business is AI Trust Signals, which is founded with my partner Marcus Sheridan, who's a longtime sort of legend in marketing. He has a couple of books, including They Ask You Answer. And we created a SaaS, an AI SaaS platform that examines the ingredients of trust, the behaviors that brands need to take to build trust with human buyers. That also happen to represent the things that AI models need to be able to trust and thus recommend brands to their users. And so AI Trust Signals is a subscription tool. It's one of the most affordable tools on the market that you can use to plug in your website, understand ⁓ are you giving off good trust signals about your business? And then we give you recommendations about how to fix them so that you can show up in AI answers. So my days today are spent with no boss, but very busy nonetheless. ⁓ between doing the marketing consulting work on the sovereign CMO side and then running the the AI trust signals business. Jamie: So th that was great. ⁓ and and that was quick. Right? You you did the that was quick. That was good. Like for for for the length and and for the volume of stuff that you you've done. ⁓ that was really great. So thank you for sharing that. ⁓ so I I actually wanted to talk a little bit about the transition and how that how that's felt. Cause you talk about 18 months and it feels like, you know, ha a lifetime, right? The the and that's the point. And not just one business, but two. Patrick Moorhead: Can't believe I did it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jamie: So how can you describe the differences have been for you? How it's felt different? I know you talk about the boss but bit no boss but busy. So what did that look like? What are the what are the surprises that you've had and what have been the awesome parts about what you've had doing this? Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. a lot you can say. I think there's I think when you see, you know, influencers online of talking about ⁓ I my nine to five and and now I work twenty-four-seven. That that's kind of real. ⁓ I think I think when I s I think when I started ⁓ Jamie: Yeah. I love the way you say it. Right. It's it's actually real. Like, there's influencers saying that. It's like a real thing. Patrick Moorhead: No, they're not lying. Yeah, it's a that's a thing. it is I mean, it is and it isn't. Look, I I did have the sort of rose colored glasses, I think, when I set out on my own that I was gonna work 30 hours a week and I was gonna pull down, you know, ⁓ as much as I was making sitting at the desk of the other guy, and and life would be a dream. ⁓ And not that that's not true, but the to get There is longer and windier than I anticipated it was going to be. there's just aspects of working for yourself that are make having a full-time job sometimes seem really appealing, just because it's easier to have someone else set the agenda and tell you what to do. And again, I was working in C level positions for over 10 years. So I was often the person that was having to do that, but there was always someone higher than me, right? The CEO who was doing that for me. And and there that isn't there anymore, you know? And so it's it's forced me to level up my my self-discipline quite a bit. ⁓ I think that I I often ⁓ situations where I am severely undermotivated to do the thing that I know I have to do in to keep going. ⁓ And I have to do it. ⁓ And I don't, no one else is gonna do it. And if I if no one else does it, then I'm not gonna survive. Like the business isn't gonna survive. so that's a big difference for me. Jamie: It's amazing because I'm sitting here listening to you and I'm sure there are others who are like listening right now, going, Yeah, I totally yep, yeah, totally get it. Uh-huh. Right. Let me let me ask a question because I'm ⁓ curious and it and it's ⁓ you know you know, w it's hard enough to start a business and you shifted from I'm ⁓ Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. All right. Jamie: Working in a company, I've got a job. I, you know, like you said, other people can tell me make the final decision or at least push and I have no, you know, that's fine. Then you go off from that and go, you know what? I'm not gonna just go and run my own business. I'm gonna go and run two. So I'm trying to understand, well, it was that a Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: I th I know the consulting and I'm comfortable with the consulting and I'm not sure about the AI trust signals feels more higher risk or longer longer like curve. Like what is that what is that in your mind? and then what has that meant for you? Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the it the anal so I'll answer the second question first. What it's meant for me is very similar to the analogy, and parents will recognize this immediately, where you have idea that your first kid is really hard and that your second kid is somehow gonna be easier because you made all the mistakes on the first one. And that's also wrong because the second kid is just double the first one and now you got two, right? So it's not it's a one plus one equals three situation. ⁓ and so you know that that's that. The the answer to your first question is it happened to me by accident and and I'm blessed and fortunate that that it happened that way. when I started the consulting business, that was my goal was to have the consulting business ⁓ stand up, drive clients. ⁓ You I had the idea of kind of working ⁓ fractionally two or three clients at a time ⁓ on you three to six month engagements. And of course, when I started, I had no clients. so I was heavy into ⁓ I mean, I had to do business development and I had to put up put up a website and figure out messaging and package myself and do all this stuff. and three months into that, I had the idea ⁓ to a I had I was sitting on top of all this research about that I had done in my full-time CMO job about. The traffic shift from Google to AI search. And the signatures of that in the analytics and the implications of that for content marketing experiments that we had run to try and account for that at the ⁓ at PriceFX company. And I you what? Maybe I'll maybe that's my lead magnet is I'm gonna try to write. Jamie: Mm-hmm. Patrick Moorhead: down all that stuff and compile it into like a high value lead magnet. and so it started out as a PDF that blossomed into like a ⁓ bigger PDF that ultimately blossomed into what became I think a hundred or so page book. and I did it really fast. I I wrote it over a period of like four or five weeks. And then my idea was, okay, this is good enough. I'm going to try to sell it. So I put it on my website, $14.99, you can download a copy. ⁓ And then started making videos about it. And I sold one copy to my mom and I sold one copy to my girlfriend. ⁓ and so it failed miserably. And I didn't get any leads either. So ⁓ so I was talking with a good friend about it, and I was complaining about it to my friend, and and he said, Pat, he said, Why are you selling the book? Just give it away. And I was like, But but I want to make money. And he said, How many copies of that 1499 book are you gonna have to sell to equal the revenue off of one? Jamie: ⁓ amazing. Amazing. Patrick Moorhead: Fractional client. And I did the math and it was impossible. And so I said, You're right. I if I can give the book away and it gives me one fractional client, it'll be worth it. So I put it up for free on my website it went nuts. And within ⁓ or three weeks, I had thousands of downloads of this thing. and of downloads was Marcus Sheridan. and so Marcus and I had been in each other's orbit. I had Jamie: Mm-hmm. Patrick Moorhead: Hired Marcus's agency at both Label Insight and Price Effects to do web development work for us. I had read his book. I had done some coaching with his team they were coaching me. So we were aware of each other, but hadn't ever actually really met. And so I was shocked one day when I posted about the book, ⁓ and Sheridan messaged me on LinkedIn and said, dude, this book's really good. There's so many synergies with what I'm doing. And we should chat about it. And I remember when I saw it, I was jumping up and down in my living room. ⁓ I got on the phone with Marcus. We started talking. There were indeed a lot of synergies. And after multiple kind of kitchen table conversations, we realized we started out thinking that we would write a book together. And then we realized it wasn't a book, it was a business. And so we decided at that point to join forces and invest and go and build AI Trust Signals. And so the Trust Signals business happened by accident, and now what's happening is I'm kind of seeing the synergy between the two where I have this kind of founder CEO credential with AI Trust Signals, and it's a tool for measuring you know, AI search recommendation performance for brands. And the insights that spin off that clearly inform, they offer credibility to the consulting work, but they also inform the consulting work that I do. So they they play nicely together. Practically it's a mess. I mean, they're both they're both full time jobs ⁓ they're both getting half my time. Jamie: Yeah. Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. So Jamie: Yeah. So that was that was sort of where like cause I it's it's fascinating as you describe it. I'm like, I can totally see the synergies. Like they make so much sense. And actually, as you're describing where you were before as lead magnet to business, in that way, it would make sense. Like, sorry, it it has a lot of natural connections as you look at it that way, but it's not. It's Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: Business and business and business and business means both things need to go and they need to go. So I I would just I I know that I'm busy enough as it is and I'm you you're describing it. You're more than busy and then it's like, yeah, and I've got two things and they're they've got different sets of challenges and ways to grab people and everything else. So ⁓ glad you got all that extra free time, Patrick. That's ⁓ Patrick Moorhead: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, and the other I'll say this too, which is kind of back to that topic of like the the dream of like, ⁓ I'm gonna work 30 hours a week and make, you know, 300 grand a year. which I'm not doing either of those, by the way. ⁓ but now when I there's two things with travel that actually are really exciting about working for yourself. So one is I've recently this year gotten the opportunity to travel on behalf of my clients that I'm doing consulting work with. Jamie: Ha ha ha. Patrick Moorhead: And I've traveled for business my whole life. I've I've been in every major airport in the United States, I've been on every continent on the planet, like I I've been all over the world in a as a business traveler, right? yet when I travel now for business as the sovereign CMO going to visit my client or produce an event for my client, it feels different. It feels special. It I ⁓ bought the plane ticket myself. I'm there for myself. I'm on my mission to do my thing on behalf of that client. And there's something really cool about that for me as a longtime business traveler. And the other travel s note I would give you is I'm ⁓ I've taken a few vacations, believe it or not. Take my my boy skiing ⁓ in the Alps and I'm getting ready to go on vacation for two weeks in July in Tuscany. I live in Europe, ⁓ so this is easy. These are like that's like me going Chicago to Florida is is me going to Tuscany, right? ⁓ and I'll go for two weeks to Tuscany to live in kind of a villa. ⁓ And not really a vacation because I'm taking the Starlink and I can't ever be away from either company for a day because they need attention. But at the same time, no one can stop me. Right. Like I just tell my clients, like, hey, I'm working in Tuscany. My hours are these. the trust signals business, you know, thank God I have now a couple of people on the team that are helping me with it. And and I can leave it with them and check in on a day. And if there's fires and issues, we'll deal with it. And and that's really cool too, that there's no like I'm not like putting in for a PTO. ⁓ just kinda like I'm choosing and I'm going. And so there is that kind of freedom to it that's really exciting. Jamie: Yeah, the it's the you're You're on twenty four seven, but it's a choice that you're on twenty four four like it right it you it's still you're still in control of that. ⁓ whether it always feels like control. Yeah. Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I try to take advantage of it. Yeah, exactly. I like like you know, there's nights like last night I had a a thing pop up that I'm still dealing with today. And and look, I had to ⁓ make dinner for my kids and put them to bed and then open the laptop and work until one or two in the morning. Cause like I said, no one else is gonna do it and if it doesn't happen, we're not gonna survive. you know? ⁓ But then there's also days where it's like I'll be here in the office and it'll be kind of two o'clock and I'll have done a bunch of stuff and I'll look at my list and I'll say, you know what, a lot of this I can I have time to do tomorrow. Like I'm just gonna split. Like I'm just gonna go. Like I'll leave, you know, and ⁓ and that that's a part of it too, right? Is finding your your moments. I don't believe I don't really believe in work life balance. I believe in work life integration. Jamie: Great. What a great line. What a great way to describe it. Because it's just living, right? So work is just part of the living as opposed to this horrible thing you have to go do. You just to your point, if I'm if I'm gonna then rephrase it, it's sort of you're going to you integrate it right into your life and make it work in your life in a way that is comfortable and works for you. That's that's Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: Let let me ask a question because I I I ⁓ I think this is I mean I love the w I the f this has been great. This is really great. What what there's anything you could look at over the last eighteen to twenty-four months, because in that range of time sort of since you started. Patrick Moorhead: Please. Jamie: or just before you did and then when you did that you y you you would you wish you had a do over on and you would look at differently or or think about differently. Is there anything in particular that stands out for you as yeah. Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah, my my ⁓ I mean there's so many, Jamie, that I could list. I'm trying to think of the, you know, kind of the top ones. I think I'm still new, you know, and I and I remind myself of that. Like I don't I don't have the the battle hardened kind of like confidence of a five year, ten year, someone like you, right, who's been doing it forever. so I but even at this ⁓ moment like eighteen months ⁓ in I would say wish I could go ⁓ and slow down a little bit and like enjoy it a little bit more in the earlier phases. I was so obsessed like, I gotta get the client, I gotta get the lead, I gotta get the sale, I gotta get the money, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And it and it was ⁓ very in a way. There was a desperation to it. that looking back and now with some experience, I understand like it wasn't necessary, you know, that that I and I that's not true for everybody. I'm lucky, right? Like I've I've been fortunate and blessed in my career to, you know, accumulate enough security financially that when I started out on my own, I wasn't I didn't have to make the first month rent happen on the first month. You know what I mean? Like I I planned it enough that I had a runway where where I could Jamie: Yeah, Patrick Moorhead: you know, grow it. I don't know if I took advantage of that. And and I think if I was advising myself backwards, I would say, hey, you have a lot you have a unique position. First of all, I would tell anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur, don't try to do it until you have created the circumstances for yourself to exist in your life for a good chunk of time. Right. Until ideally until enough time that the business is functional. Right. So whether that's three months or six months or what nine months or a year or whatever it is, I don't know. Create that runway, but then take advantage of it. And I think I didn't take advantage of it. I think I I created the runway for myself and then I acted as if it wasn't there. ⁓ c and I and their penalty for that was I think a lot of unnecessary sleepless nights and and hand wringing and, you know, panic that wasn't actually necessary or real. Jamie: Yeah. wow, what a surprise. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship. No. I'm just like, really? Because I I didn't know that that world ever sort of stops, right? It just starts like that is the sleepless nights of the panic and everything else. And then it just never seems to go away. no matter what happens. No matter and no matter what you read or see anywhere. I don't know an entrepreneur that's like, yeah, I'm just chilling. It's all good, right? ⁓ no, that ⁓ that such a, you know, I I think that ⁓ way of thinking. ⁓ Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, maybe it doesn't actually. Right, right. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's so easy, I'm just gliding along. ⁓ Jamie: Is so valuable no matter who you are at what stage. And I agree. You'd you you didn't say go get rich and then have a lot of time to go do it. You sort of said create the parameters, the circumstances, the the setup so that you can do what you're doing properly. And I and by the way, like I agree, everybody's got a different time frame, but you can't control speed. Like one of the things I've learned over time is you cannot control. Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: sort of speed to I said speed to market, but I mean like you can't make customers buy faster than they can buy. Certain things just take time whether you like it or not. And fighting that is just make creating s undue stress. What you need to do is go, I can control what I can control, which is the hardest thing as an entrepreneur, right? Obviously it's like you you don't control a lot of things and you think you live in now in a world where you want to control everything. Patrick Moorhead: Right, right, right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I I that's right. I look, I think one of the craziest ironies of of entrepreneurism is ⁓ the amount of patience it requires to be good at it from people that have none. ⁓ Jamie: Yes. Wow. That is a know, it is it is the most true thing ever, right? You have to be calm, patient, like all the things that are not Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Jamie: What is it? The group, like the num the percentage of people I talk to, it's like, yeah, my ADHD, my ADHD, and like in particular, like entrepreneur is just the way over index. It's like it and and and that alone isn't I'm not trying to make light of of people who who really do, but I think a lot of folks that are that are going down that path. It's just Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Jamie: the hard to focus, hard to stay. Everything you're saying is right. Bang on. Like it's really, really it's very, very thoughtful. You're you've you've lived it. You're living it. It's amazing. It's fantastic. So so so okay. So you've you've had and you continue to have a lot of success doing what you're doing. I know it's it's building. Where I you know, ⁓ I tried AI trust signals, love the stuff that I got out of it. ⁓ Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well thank you, thank you. Yeah. ⁓ thank you. Jamie: And then obviously you've got a lot to bring to the table also from on the consulting side. How can folks find you, ⁓ get hold of you? Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you can find me if you're interested in working directly with me. You can find me at the sovereigncmo.com. it's sovereign S ⁓ O E ⁓ R I G N. ⁓ C ⁓ O. ⁓ Okay, ⁓ Like would I'm like I'm sitting here, I'm like, it would be good if I could spell my own company name, right? ⁓ yeah. Jamie: We'll we'll put we'll put links by the way in the description. Don't don't worry. So so we'll put it in the description, not to worry. Yeah, no no no, we'll put it in the description. People don't have to know how to you don't by the way, nobody else to know a spell and Patrick doesn't know how to spell either. Just to have to send me the right just the right link. Patrick Moorhead: ⁓ sovereigncmo.com, that's a consulting business. You can read all about kind of the work that I do there and you can book appointments directly from the website with me if you're interested in having a conversation like this. and I I like to think I'm easy to talk to, so welcome that. And then ⁓ Trust Signals is Aitrust Signals dot com. You can sign up for your ⁓ free report right off the homepage and get a snapshot of what your trust signals look like today and then subscribe from there into the paid service, which has a loads of ⁓ value. It has 19 trust signals ⁓ with detailed per engine, verbatim reporting, recommendations, executive summaries, and Marcus AI, which is an AI version of Marcus Sheridan that can ⁓ you can interact with and actually ask him for advice about what to do to improve your AI ranking and visibility in a in an AI chat environment. So that one's really cool for 10 bucks a month. It's one of the best values ⁓ in software, I think. Jamie: Amazing. No, it's fantastic. I I love it. so Lisa, thank you so much for your time. This has been great. I really appreciate it. ⁓ very, very lot of really great insights, ⁓ I think for everyone. So, so, and thank you and continued success. ⁓ to everybody who's watching and listening, thank you until next time. See ya. Patrick Moorhead: Pleasure. It's my pleasure. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, likewise.