Jay: Good marketing is not about who arrives, it's about who stays.
Joeri: Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast, season 3, episode 2. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Jay Acunzo. Hi, Jay, how are you?
Jay: Hey, Joeri, thanks for having me.
Joeri: Yes, I'm excited because you're already for some time on my list, for Jay, and also we met in Cleveland at the CX I really liked the presentation that you have given. It was a presentation that made me think It's still in my head, by the way. So, guys, but yeah, it was really you know, that's also something you learn from people with their content, but also how they bring the content, and, of course, you are all about content creation. But for people that don't know you, Jay, don't know you yet. Let me give a short introduction.
Joeri: So, guys, who is Jay Acunzo? Well, he has worked in marketing and in media roles for brands like Google, HubSpot, and ESPN, even for a tiny startup, even a VC firm, and Jay became an independent creator. That we did something unpopular, but he can talk about it later in the podcast Today. What he is? he's an author, he's a podcaster, he's a creative coach for people who believe in creativity and what you can do with that, he co-founded and runs Creator Kitchen. It's a membership for quality-obsessed creators. He has even filmed a docu-series about value-based business. He's launched a podcast course. He's doing speeches everywhere. That's how I also met Jay in Cleveland. So, Jay, I have a question for you to start this podcast with what has been the most unconventional choice that you have made in your career and how has it shaped your part?
Jay: I think I liked the joke that my grandest delusion it's also an aspiration. Let's be positive here. It's an aspiration I have, but it's also delusional of me to think this is to bring stories similar to the great Anthony Bourdain into our world, our world of marketers and creators and people who have meaningful things to say digitally. Because when you hear stories about our space, to me anyway, they tend to fall flat. They don't bring the full range of human emotion. They over-index on a certain tone, a certain style. There's really not a ton of attention paid to the human condition. I think the two extremes of content about our world. You have, on the one end, people talking about the most famous names and brands, and on the other end you have people who are posting things seemingly about the human condition, seemingly about people, but it's not very useful, it's not really story driven.
Jay: Bourdain as a storyteller, an author, and a television personality, would sit with somebody going through their seemingly day-to-day lives of running a restaurant, running a market, or serving dinner to their family and he would ask simple questions and get incredible answers and craft these narratives that shifted the way you thought about something. From the specifics he found the universal and from the seemingly mundane moments, he found very meaningful things. I just want to bring those types of ideas and feelings into our world, from my podcast, which is very narrative in its style, to my newsletter, which is very long and runs every other week. To the Creator Kitchen, which is a membership that never says I'll 10x anything of your work but focuses on creative growth. I'm making choices pointed towards storytelling and craft, which I think has gotten unpopular these days in the era full of hitting buttons and outcomes of a full blog post.
Joeri: Yeah, I remember from your talk. One thing was about a lot of podcasts. A lot of content is transactional, but what you want to do is make transformations in the life of your audience, and that's actually what I hear you say, right?
Jay: I think that's right. It's about changing the person on the other end. That's what writing is for. That's what speaking is for. That's what the creative work is for is to change their perspective on something. It's not just to be a help center, documentation of taking these steps to do this thing. That's commodified. I can get that anywhere. Why do I care about that? I'm getting it from you. What do I learn about you? Why would I trust you? Why would I go with you?
Jay: So the way I like to talk about this publicly is to talk about resonance. My business is built not only on the idea of resonating with my audience but to teach the craft of resonating because marketing is not about getting in front of people. Marketing is about ensuring they care about you. That is a skill set, that is a craft. The second thing to think of. The best approach is to tell stories pulled from your own life and lived experiences and moments and all these things that LLMs don't have access to and AIs can't train on. But the idea is to resonate deeper with others/ because that's what sparks action. If something resonates with you, you feel an urge to act. We've all felt that way. So we all want people to take action. We all want results. We're all in that business, which means we're all in the business of resonating deeper. So that's what I'm trying to help people understand and do.
Joeri: Right, and these days, jd, there are so many channels, social media channels, but I know you are also an author, you're a speaker, you have the podcast. How do you approach it at all these different channels? Do you make choices or how do you approach them?
Jay: Central to everything is my creative practice. It is the thing that I think every creative needs, every creator needs, is that practice that you would do if nobody paid attention to it because it's making you better at whatever it is you're trying to do for a result. So I have an every-other-week newsletter and an every-other-week podcast. I would do at least one of those, if not both, regardless of the marketing result. Now they have marketing-like results. They contribute to my business. But those are the two places my newsletter from my perspective and my podcast from others' perspectives where I'm working out my ideas, like these are my thinking laboratories, the places I develop intellectual property, IP. It's where my ideas are sharpened and built and I collect stories and develop frameworks and all of those things. And then those things, the ideas, the IP. That's kind of like my product so right now.
Jay: So what is the residence IP Or the storytelling IP as different and discreetly valuable compared to all the competitive ideas out there, while I'm developing those in these projects. And then they become the product, becomes different features. The book is a feature. It's how you access the IP, access the product,, the course, the membership, all these things that people say are products. I view them as features of the product, which is my idea.
Jay: So right now, exploring this idea of residence, helping people become better, more personal storytellers, I need a place to work through my head, work through the garbage running around my own brain, and also go explore who has done what out in the world where we can learn from them. And a lot of us don't have that. A lot of us think every project that we launch has to be somehow commercially viable and fast, and that really removes the thinking process the way you get to a project or several projects that people want to subscribe to or share. So I do a lot of things, but they all connect around a similar idea that I'm currently developing and they all start with my creative practice.
Joeri: Actually, it's a bit the same with me.
Joeri: I started the podcast also at a certain moment, not thinking of monetizing it, but just thinking, ok, I get to meet people, I get to talk to people about marketing subjects, and then it evolves because it was it's not now what I thought it would be like in the beginning and of course, you get better and you evolve and stuff.
Joeri: You get to meet people and it's Was not my goal, you know, to make money out of it. It was just like I want to be there and it's as you say, it's for me, it's the way that I produce content. It's not so difficult for me, it's my nature, I would say, to talk to people, to talk to people, but of course, at a certain moment, you want to get to know, be known by the world, you want to show it to the world, and then you have distribution channels, you have social media and so on, and you have today you have these tools. I'm curious to know because it's a big subject, but do you see the benefit of some of these tools? are you using them for your content creation?
Jay: I'm not using them because I don't see yet how they solve a problem that I currently have. I think there is a there's a strong stance that I have that I'm seeing a lot of people use these tools to outsource their imagination, and that's really dangerous. What they're doing is skipping the messy part, skipping the wrestling with an idea or drafting, or coming up with bad bits of text or whatever it is you're creating to then clean it up later. That's the thinking process. That's what enables you to do more than publish words, and so what I'm seeing happen, and so that's outsourcing your imagination. I think they're fine to use, like any tool or any technique. Really, if you want to unblock your imagination or have somebody say, give you the average approach to your topic, then you don't write it that way. I've seen a lot of authors do this, where they'll use chatGPT, to give themselves a good idea, to give themselves the anti example. I don't want to write it this way because that's the average, it's, it's the mean of the internet and how they would approach it. Well, I'm not the general advice, I'm me, I'm you're you, where are you in all this mess? so, but I think the best way to look at this, or anyway, the clearest that I've come up with, is you're seeing a divide between people who think the job is to create content and people who know the job is to create connection. That's what the content is for.
Jay: The job is not to publish stuff. The job is not to release things out into the world. The job is to say something that matters to connect deeply, to align with others on an emotional level again, to resonate with them, and not just to get an outcome for your business, but also an outcome for them in a way that they see the world as a result of your writing, a way that they feel about something or execute in a certain way through a perspective you have. So the one thing that these tools can't give you is your personal perspective. What do you have to say about this topic? Give me that That's the only defensible thing that we can be doing right now is pulling from our lived experiences, memories, and daily moments, to tell personal stories and give a personal perspective. Why are you talking about this? What do you have to say here, so that really bright line is being drawn and you can look at people's behaviors and basically categorize them into these two camps? Do you think the job is to create content or do you understand the job is to create connection? That's what the content is for.
Joeri: Right, I know that you have these pyramids that you showed during a slide.
Jay: Yeah.
Joeri: So for me, and also about I'm an explorer that's what I learned And actually that's what I'm doing. I'm not using AI to create my content, but I try to use AI too. I'm better at speaking than in writing And I just feed the AI tools chatGPT, and stuff with my transcripts, and I want AI to help me to write a blog article about this, But it's still my imagination. It's content that we are now making today about, We are discussing, and We are creating content that doesn't exist because of our interaction before. So that's how I'm using it as a productivity tool. I would say, Yeah, Is that something that you would advise to use as a productivity tool?
Jay: I would never tell people or try to help them select a tool. I would never, ever think that I am in a position to say I know everything that you're going through, that technology is right or wrong for you. No way.
Joeri: Yeah.
Jay: Because the most important thing is you understand what you're trying to build. If you're building a house, is a hammer useful? Is that tool useful? Is that I don't know. I first need to know a lot about what you are trying to build uniquely. What is your vision for the work?
Jay: And what scares me, Joeri, is not bots replacing creators. What scares me is creators who act like bots. They see something that's popular and they just copy it. There are charlatans who steal. They just steal someone's content or ideas. But then there are also the folks that maybe even have good intentions and they want to see a result for their business or they want to help their audience in earnest. They have good intentions, but what they're doing is just adding to the sameness. They're just creating more of the same stuff And at best it is useful as a commodity, but the source doesn't matter. So I can get that anywhere, okay?
Jay: So how do you compete? You have to rank number one. You have to shout louder. You have to hype yourself harder. You have to go viral. That's exhausting. It's inefficient for your business. It's also not differentiated to your audience whatsoever.
Jay: So I can get 70 prompts for chatGPT in a Twitter thread or a LinkedIn, slider, or whatever A million different places. Why am I getting it from you? Tell me about yourself. How am I going to connect deeper with you Such that when the next person comes along, or the next organization. or next trend, I don't immediately drop you and move on And this is not me dropping you in favor of somebody in your space, necessarily. This could be well. I have room in my life for six podcasts and a comedian I love just started a podcast and you talk about marketing. But to fit this comedian into my podcast-playing experience, I'm going to drop this marketing podcast over here. That's our competitor.
Jay: Where do you fit in your audience's life? And, more importantly, why would they pick you and stick with you? So one way to look at this is you're trying to get in front of people. That's what a lot of folks are doing when they're like should I use this tool? Let's start with your vision. What are you trying to say and how? How are you connecting more deeply with others? Instead of trying to jump on trends, press, pause, and really think about the change you're trying to inspire in others. So, instead of having a bunch of topics that you compete on, it's about the meaning of those words. It's about the meaning of the content. It's about the ability you have to not be the biggest or the best, but to be their favorite. Because those things are irrational. People go I know there's a hot new trend, I know there's a bigger podcast, but Yuri's is my favorite but and that's again irrational. That's a positive emotional bias that I have toward you. That's what we want from our audience And you don't get that by publishing generalized expertise.
Joeri: Exactly. I also remember from your talk that you need to have a specific and defensible purpose.
Jay: you know, for premise The premise Yeah, so yeah, the premise is the specific defensible purpose for any project. It could be your overall platform, could be a podcast, could be a newsletter. It's the specific defensible purpose that's pulled from your personal vision for your audience. So there are components you can look at to understand. Do I have that specific? Are you generalizing or are you specific? And in your specificity, is it defensible? Because you might be specific, but you're saying you're the first podcast on X. That's not very defensible, because as soon as there are two, no one really cares about the first. That's a very thin moat about the width of my finger that anybody could get over. Or defensible, as in. It's a little bit more timeless than just riding a wave of a trend. Or defensible, as in. I have a unique something to say about this. I can actually own the idea outright in the market. So when someone thinks of this, they think of me and any competitor or peer that decides they want to create that too. Everyone goes well, that's Yuri's thing, that's Jay's thing, right, so specific and defensible. And then you're pulled from your personal vision.
Jay: Some people might think, okay, to be successful, as we'll just say, podcaster, you need to learn how to book all the biggest names. So my prescription to you is I'm going to help you book better and better guests. Well, that's not what I believe at all as an individual. As Jay, I believe that what you really need is, in a very ironic fashion here, a premise. You need a premise for your podcast.
Jay: Okay, I am telling you, go to that mountain peak over there, to the left Other people might disagree and they're going to go to the right. That's fine. My work is for the people who understand, or I can help them see, they should go that direction, and I can hold that up to a competitor And the competitor looks at it and goes, yeah, I don't do that, I don't agree with that or I don't do that. You know what is not defensible, what is not from your personal vision, is you say, well, we're going to interview marketers like everybody else, but we're going to ask them to eat really spicy chicken wings. So it's like a game, that's not. What is that saying about you?
Jay: and your ideas, Nothing right. So that's not pulled from your personal vision unlike other shows, we really get practical advice. Your competitors would say they do that too. So the real test is can you hold up your premise? And it is so specific and defensible and pulled from your personal vision that a competitor would freely look at that and go, yeah, no, we don't do that.
Joeri: Right, and there is also a way to kick in how you build up, how you bring it, also because you have the personality and the personal brand that I have my style. someone else has their style. Like you know, in the beginning, when I started the podcast, I was saying should I do this in English Because I'm, you know, native English is not my native language? Should I do this or should I? but now seems that people recognize me. you know, it's like part of the personal brand, part of the story, maybe not part of the premise, but part of, you know, of the distinction with other podcasts. So you also, you know, in the beginning, I mentioned you worked for bigger brands. So this has, of course, built your career, built your experience. Are there things that you learned from working for those bigger brands that are still applying today? for?
Jay: a contact. Yeah, I mean, the most important thing I learned is I'm really bad at bosses. I'm really bad at playing the corporate game. I don't have the patience for it, I don't have the tolerance for it. I used to think that success was working for the most famous brand you could possibly work for, and I just no longer believe that.
Jay: I think, on the more positive side, the things I've learned from those experiences are a version of me that probably showed up publicly, especially when I first started writing on the internet and would look at corporate norms or the output, like content coming from marketers, and I would get really upset Like why are you doing it that way, what's? and now I understand that the intention of the person is really hard to judge from the outside, looking in, without really understanding the culture and the systems that they're running or up against and fighting. And so I learned because of those experiences that if I can equip the individual to not just do better work right now, but to explain that work because, let's say, I've demystified the creative process, so they always intrinsically knew they wanted to tell a story this way, they wanted to write this way, they wanted to podcast this way and they were natural at that or they just knew to do that. If I can study the process, if I can study the practice, if I can study the posture of a creative person or a storyteller and make it more concrete, kind of help them see the code of the matrix, then they not only can control it and create better things, but they can explain it to others, giving language to things that maybe don't have language. Being a translator almost, because sometimes you need to as part of the job the people, the stakeholders I need to convince to succeed. That's my audience, the stakeholders that someone internally needs to convince. That is the boss, that is the peer. If you're a freelancer, that's the client and it's part of the work. It doesn't get in the way of the work.
Jay: So in my 20s I would thrash inside of these big businesses because I had a way I wanted to create content and I didn't see it that way And I was too young or too naive or too inexperienced to know how to communicate it in the right way. That gets people on board, but it's a very useful skill. I think creativity and storytelling is a forms of leadership because you move people away from what's broken, away from the status quo towards something better with your ideas and your work. Well, that applies when you're speaking to your audience absolutely. But it's also a very useful skill when you're trying to show others what's in your mind, what's in your heart when they don't quite get it. And I'm very thankful that I have those experiences. I never want them again, but I'm very thankful I had them.
Joeri: Yeah, like me, I also had some kind of these experiences, but you know it helps you, you learn from it, and so on. And actually, times are changing, technologies are changing. You have also worked in different niches bigger companies, smaller ones. You know it's the Web3 CMO Store's podcast. I won't ask you something about Web3, but there is like a lot of things are moving in the world And I was wondering if there are marketing fundamentals that worked 20 years ago that still work today. What about storytelling, Jay? Are there certain fundamentals that you could say that never change?
Jay: Yeah, I think the carbon element of the story is tension. You know, the carbon element of the world, like, if you don't have carbon, you don't have life. If you don't have tension, you don't have a story. Storytelling is a way, like I said, to lead, because stories are a vehicle to deliver a change. Right, the protagonist. If it's a whole narrative, in the classic storytelling fashion, the protagonist arrives home changed. But if you're just using an observation, talking about something in your life, I'll give you an example. I can give you two descriptions of my morning. One contains tension, one does not. So here's one that does not contain tension.
Jay: This morning I woke up and grabbed myself a cup of coffee like I do every morning. Now, what you're thinking is so what? I don't care. I don't see how this applies to me. I don't want to know anymore from you. No, thank you. So I have spoken to you in a very clear fashion. You can picture it.
Jay: This morning I woke up, went down to my kitchen, and grabbed the whatever black metal handle on my white cabinets. I opened it. I grabbed the bright white mug And you know, like all these things are clear to you. I'm communicating clearly, but you don't care, because it's not enough to communicate clearly, we also have to create a connection. So another way I could tell this story which does create some kind of connection, because you start to learn about me and maybe because it aligns with you, you care is I could say well, this morning I woke up, went down to my cabinet you know all the descriptions you just heard and I reached for the mug that has the words that reflect my desire as a creative person most clearly. So I didn't really describe much. But what is the question on your mind? What does the mug say? So there's some tension. You have a question. I need to answer it. But I'm also using it not as a hollow gimmick, not as click bait to try and grab your attention. I'm using it to convey something about myself that you might care about. Oh, I'm creative. Jay's aligning with me. Is he a creative person? I'm a creative person. I identify as a creative person. So I'd like to continue hearing what Jay has to say.
Jay: Right, it's not just the top 10 tips to do something, and number five will blow you away. It's not that. And then I can close that open loop by saying here's the word. The words are all I want to do is drink coffee, make stuff, and sleep I don't know like there's something I can come up with there.
Jay: So when we use tension, what we're doing is we're creating questions on people's minds that they want answers to, and you want to answer them. So we're creating a tactful way to do that, and then there's a gimmicky, hollow, almost frustrating way in the eyes of the audience to do that. And so mostly what we're doing right now, especially on social media, is we're doing the clickbaity things on everything. Why? Because we're focused on grabbing attention. But grabbing attention is insufficient. It is not the job. We have to hold attention and convert attention. Everybody is obsessing over grabbing attention, almost to the detriment of what happens next in the experience.
Jay: But good marketing is not about who arrives, it's about who stays. So the real question is not can you reach people? It's can you resonate with them, can you align with them so closely that they feel amplified and want to take action? The tool to do that can be tension in your storytelling. That's total, universal. It doesn't matter what medium you show up in. It doesn't matter what type of style or tone you deliver your words in. It doesn't matter if it's just you, if it's you with a guest, if it's you with a peer, it doesn't matter if the whole piece is a narrative or if you're just using a little opening moment. That is a principle of storytelling that is related to the narratives that we grew up reading in novels or watching in films, but can apply to single-sentence tweets, to opening paragraphs of blog posts, and certainly to moments like this in a podcast.
Joeri: Right, I like the word tension, Jay, because it's for me it's a positive. third positive tension because I always heard, like you know, you need to scare people a bit or you need to have like on the negative emotions that they are missing out on something, or you need to use, as you know, these tactics, like you say, like getting their attention, but then you know you need to be able to build further upon it and if you cannot deliver, like what you're saying is, you build up this tension. Then you stay on the same positive tone.
Jay: So for me that's right, take a nuanced view on this idea, as every idea should be. You take a nuanced view. The sun is life-giving. We literally would not have life without the sun. Right, I mentioned carbon. Let's continue talking about life. The sun is life-giving, but too much sun is bad for you.
Jay: So tension gives life to a story. It gives meaning to your words, it gives people a reason why they'd want to continue listening to you and maybe even creates the conditions for a connection to be made, depending on what happens on the other side. It can also push people away because you're not delivering on the promise. You're using too much sensationalism, too much hype. You've raised tons of stakes and they didn't really pay off. Tons of questions that you never answered or you didn't answer it well in a way that matched your hype right. So there's a way to do this well.
Jay: When we talk about stories in marketing, a lot of people just want this one simple solution to do it well. But it's not that, it's the amalgam, it's the collection of all these different things that you can use on a technical basis, that you use as tools to bring out what you have to offer on an emotional basis. Again, that's another problem with outsourcing your imagination to technology, allowing a tool to generate most or all of your work, does not allow the best of you to come through. So we all understand the value of process and telling stories, but that's only one piece of your mastery of the craft. You also have a practice, ideally, where you are learning about yourself and the world by shipping on a regular basis. You're not just earning trust with others, you're learning to trust yourself. So do you have a practice? Because that's part of mastering your craft, just like the process. And what's your posture? What's the messy bag of human goodness that you bring with you? that contains your personality quirks, your vision, your personal perspective, and all the memories and moments of your life that roll into you? That's an unfair advantage, and most of us either don't use that stuff And we write very generically or communicate very generically, or we're proud that we have some kind of originality, some creative fingerprints on the work, but we leave that to chance.
Jay: We hope that it comes through when we write when we speak, when we produce anything. But now we have to learn to do that on demand. Now we have to learn to make that our core competency, because that first piece, process, is the piece that technology is remarkably good at owning The steps you move through the outline of the piece, the general idea that stuff can be outsourced And it also can be given to you. Follow this blueprint for your process. Use this technology. Use this technique. It's an open loop to deliver tension That can be handed to you, but the stuff that you have to earn is the stuff that makes your work resonate, the stuff that makes people care about you and your business or you and your cause. That's your practice and your posture, so learn to master those things in this era of generalized advice and you'll stand out a lot easier.
Joeri: Well, I was, you know, listening to you make my head spin again, like after the presentation in Cleveland. I was like, okay, I need to do stuff. I was even talking to other people. We need to do stuff that Jay was talking about. Now, again, we get so much powerful words. I really need to do something with it. And if you are listening to the show, really take notes, check out the show notes. You really need to do something with this. Jay, if people are like me, you know they are thinking and they want to do. They want to know more about you, they want to get more tips or consume your content. Where would you like to send them?
Jay: So I do two things for a living I teach and I speak. So I do both of those things. In our membership Creator Kitchen, That's creatorkitchencom, And I also offer coaching services and have a podcast called Unthinkable and a newsletter called Playing Favorites. So my coaching, my podcast, and my newsletter are all focused on becoming a more effective storyteller learning to see that code of the matrix tell stories that could only come from you and resonate, not because you pulled some stunt and the world looked at you, but because you showed up as you in your work with stories people cared about and you made things that actually mattered to your career, to your company and to your community. So that website's Jayakonzocom, where you can find all of my projects, both free and paid.
Joeri: Okay, and I guess also some social media links people can find there. Or if they were Sure.
Jay: If they want to follow me on the ad networks.
Joeri: Yeah.
Jay: You said social media, they're ad networks. Okay, yeah.
Joeri: You know, you know, I can also call them a platform. I'm just joking, yeah, yeah yeah, follow me on Twitter.
Jay: Follow me on LinkedIn.
Joeri: Yeah.
Jay: But the things I create when an algorithm is not around, the things that I actually tried to publish for free as well, that truly help people, are going to be found on the platforms that I can control the experience so I can deliver the absolute best that I have to offer.
Joeri: Absolutely. There's also that Joe Pulizzi says you know, build not on rented ground. He says you know, rent land, build your own land.
Jay: Yeah, but it's a straight shot just to Unthinkable, which is my podcast from this show, so that's like maybe the best place to go.
Joeri: Okay, we will like J's podcast Is Unthinkable. Also, the other links will be put in the show notes. There will also be an article around this. You will find this in the show notes. J was so great to have you. Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom.
Jay: Thanks, Joeri, I appreciate the time.
Joeri: So, guys, it was again an exciting episode. I learned today a lot of stuff. I guess you learned too, and if you think there are people around you because every entrepreneur needs to create content so you can learn a lot about this episode So share the episode with people around you colleagues, team members, other entrepreneurs, people on social media Just share the episode. If you're not yet subscribed, I think now is really the moment to do that And, of course, I would like to see you back for the next podcast episode. Take care, bye, but free can take your best to your heights and you're ready to harness its power, but feeling lost and overwhelmed. Therefore, join my W3X Web3 mastermind. Send me a personal message for more info. You can find me everywhere on social media. There's only one person with my name,Joeri Billast. Talk soon.