A.J. Lawrence:
You have a bunch of cool things going on, have done some really cool things. Where do you see yourself as an entrepreneur these days?
John Hall:
Yeah, I think I like to sum it up, we’re going to be talking about content and different things that I see on the horizon with trends. But early on in my career we kind of fell into being good at basically scaling companies through content marketing, thought leadership, PR, SEO, all the organic methods of earning trust and credibility in an industry. And so the reason why we fell into that is because the three founders of my last company was called Influence. We were all young entrepreneurs and we wanted that for ourselves. We knew that we had barriers, whether it be Kelsey who was a female co-founder at a young age, Brent who looked like he was 12 even though he was very successful and experienced investor now. But back then we joke around, it’s like I had to grow facial hair just so people would take me seriously to do larger deals because we were in our early 20s. So what ended up happening is that we created just for the need for ourselves. I think some of the best innovation is when someone’s like wow, there’s a need here or I have a barrier, and you create value based on that. And so we were our first clients. We ended up growing that to a decent sized company, about a hundred or so people, and sold that in 2018. And we saw how the power of content, what it can do to build trust with specific audiences and also break down barriers to scale a company. And so we acquired relevance.com in our portfolio. So in addition to making acquisitions or investments, we invested in things like that wireless with Naturebox, different companies like that, then we also acquired companies like calendar and appointment. So we have this, I would say, this kind of powerhouse or this super strength. And what we ended up doing is making it its own service company and agency in which that’s what relevance is. And so the story here is not complicated. It’s just we found something that was valuable to ourselves, we did it for others, it did well. Then we used our money to invest in those strategies for companies, those did well. And then we started a service company that does that. So as funny as it is, I just followed value and didn’t come up with anything super. It’s not an invention of some sort, but it’s simply just following the value as an entrepreneur and what people need to scale a company. And that’s what we do for people now.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, I think a lot of things I come from a marketing point of view that you get your foundation set first and then you can do all the cool things, your analytics, know what you’re trying to do, make sure you have the right tools, all that fun stuff. And I think when I’ve looked at content marketing from a thing, it’s like there’s so many different levers you can pull that if you’re not kind of focusing it on sort of your ‘why’ you can easily become scattered shot.Let’s just jump into someone in the audience running their business. They’ve crossed over what they thought was a promised land into a million dollars in revenue a year. You think you’re going to kind of hit it and then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, it’s-this is much better than not being here, obviously, but it’s like there’s a lot more moving parts. A lot more, oh, we should do X, we should do Y, this. Where’s the first kind of focus on how to create relevance?
John Hall:
I mean, it starts with business goals. So it’s like, as funny as it is, people try and get fancy and try and come up with something viral or they try and say, hey, we want to be in the biggest publication out. We want to be- That’s not business goals. Business goals are, hey, I want to increase revenue. I want to raise this amount to help us grow this way. I want to attract this type of employee or customer. We want to build trust that our sales conversion is higher or shorter amount of time. So I think that that’s what you start off with is you simply say, hey, what are we trying to accomplish? What is success? So that’s my first question is like, what is actual true success here? So we can back into the strategy because the nuances with content actually do matter.So, when I mean nuance, oh, let’s say somebody’s like, oh, I want to raise money. Well, we might say, hey, we’re going to get you published in a couple places and we’re going to find companies that just raised amounts over this amount and we’re going to include them in it. And then we’re going to get this placed in these types of sites and try and do that. Now, that media strategy when you think about it, it’s like, okay, well, what are you doing there? Well, one, you’re getting some press coverage, which is good in general. But also the companies that recently just invested or were following companies like that, they have Google alerts and they see, oh, wait a minute, this company I invested with in the past or looked at investing, and there’s a Google alert. They look in it, they’re like, oh. And then they find your company.So that would be like a specific goal that you’re doing a different strategy rather than in the past. It’d be like, oh, do a press release. Well, press release is invaluable from a standpoint of if it gets picked up there, you don’t know who’s going to see it. And it’s also paid distribution. And that’s just one example. You know, when you look at sales, I always ask people like, what barriers exist during the sales process that prevents people from trusting you? And what assets can you get to be a part of their sales process or surrounding them in their byline, in or in their signature or on the site? How can they proactively send it? Let’s say a lead in 20, 30 days, they weren’t responsive. Send them and say, hey, by the way, we recently mentioned or we recently drafted this piece, thought it would be valuable to you. There’s so many things you can do with content but you got to start off with like, what is the goal? And then we can back into what strategy is going to be the most effective to accomplish that goal.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. Because just even jumping into sales behavior, it’s changing. Where it used to be, the vast majority of product discovery happened through a sales process. Now it’s reversed, where most of the time the awareness of what’s available in X, Y, Z category is pretty wide. All of us kind of know how to Google and we follow all the different Twitter, blah, blah, blah, you know, spaces. It’s understanding what’s in that circle and how to make sure you’re involved in that circle of consideration. So I like that kind of approach that you have. I always took it very tactical. It’s like I would do the keywords and I would do the tactical execution. Never touch content.
John Hall:
Yeah. When it comes down to, it’s like the best thing that like, we actually used to be more executors. And what I mean by executor, we would actually do the work. And I like that because there’s so many strategists and content that are like, hey, do this, do this. But then it never gets done because nobody executes on it. So we got known for actually doing the execution of it. But recently, this is probably in the last six months, we have even taken on more strategy clients than ever. And the reason why is because people actually want to plan, right. Get things set up for success, be thoughtful about their approach because you can waste a lot of money doing this.I’ve seen people waste a ton of money. For example, one of our clients, I don’t think I can disclose this one’s names, but they’re in the financial area and they’re going after one of the hardest terms on the internet and we got it for them. But we almost like advise, I mean actually to be fair, we didn’t completely advise against it from the beginning. But now I would is that that keyword will take 50 grand a month to maintain. And if you look at the actual money generated from that, it doesn’t really justify.You have 10 of the biggest financial players all going after the same keyword. That just doesn’t make sense. Let’s be thoughtful in this approach. And that’s why we’re kind of unique in a way. We’re investors as well. So we might take 40 clients on the service side, but we’ll acquire or invest in about four companies a year. So 10% of the companies we’re dealing with are ones we’ve either invested in or ended up acquiring. Now, that’s not a massive amount. But what it does is it makes us more thoughtful how the dollars are being spent. And so when we have service clients that we’re actually looking at the same service, what’s the bang for the buck? What are we getting out of this? It helps you apply that knowledge to other things as well. And so that’s what I’m a pretty big fan of when you hire a service company, if you can find one that’s a little more entrepreneurial rather than traditional, because traditional methods of 10 years just don’t work the way they did now. It’s almost like every company should have an entrepreneurial aspect to them.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. I mean, it’s so funny. It’s a lot of the same structures, but the executions rapidly are changing. And just sort of the things that used to resonate greatly don’t. Either have been overused or that they have to keep evolving, but the overall structure of like, hey, a good story, a this, or understanding your client’s journey as they go about, not just as your customer, but their thought process journey to get you, that’s still very relevant.
All right. So you kind of bring people through like, all right, what are you trying to achieve? Let’s look at the key- and I agree. When you’re looking at specific keywords, there’s always a lot of times being a little bit broad. I used to play around with keyword clouds where it’s like, all right, that XYZ term would take, as you said, gazillions of dollars to go after. But we can go after these 20 terms for a third of that. So you guys start looking at sort of the journey and then what the content is for them.
John Hall:
Yeah, exactly. And so basically, you can look at the business goals and say, hey, what are we trying to accomplish here? And what’s the best line to that business goal? And so for example, a keyword cluster, I think you were talking about like kind of a cloud. A keyword cluster of let’s say, 2, I don’t know, 2,000 long tail keyword or long tail visits. And what I mean by that is like, people are searching detailed things and saying hey, I would like to for example we own calendar. Not just saying calendar, but online calendar app for construction. That’s valuable if construction is one of our targets. So we did healthcare for a little bit and it did a great job because we were hyper targeting on healthcare keywords. Now those were long tail and those brought us the right types of clients. Now calendar, the general term didn’t bring us the right type of clients. We were getting tons of traffic but it just wasn’t bringing the right people. So yeah, that was what I would say. The thoughtfulness of how you’re approaching what are you going after, getting the right people, that does matter. And those nuances are some of the things that differentiate a good company you’re working with in our space. You want to find someone who’s actually going to try and do some quantitative metrics that they can but you’re gonna get a lot of qualitative benefits when you are doing and what I mean unmeasurable like credibility and trust benefits and things that happen that’s hard to measure. But you know, good firms and good people within organizations try to get an idea on quantitative metrics as well.
A.J. Lawrence:
Part of the fun of this is that lovely two-sided sword here of like okay, ranking or discovery factors. Now that we are also social media, you have discovery and algorithm things to make sure your content shows to the relevant people based upon what you’re trying to do. But then relevancy, is it human? Like you know, I’ve been playing around with, even before Google I was doing SEO because I knew some of the people doing some of the early Yahoo directories and it’d be like calling. That’s how old I am. I used to call some of those guys and be like, hey, I’ll trade you some of this because I had Hasbro as a client, I’ll trade you some of the Starwars figures I have for the latest photo shoot in exchange for you guys putting us in the directory listing for toys. It’s changed a little bit. But like what I notice nowadays as a user, especially in Google, there’s a Google structure where it’s like 15 pages within a description. Where it’s like the index, the tools you need, all that like and you’re just like looking for a basic piece of information that’s at the bottom of the page where it’s like so SEO structured content is now so not human. So how do you kind of play off of that where it’s like, okay, we need to be discovered so we have to play well within the game but you need to then have the content resonate when someone actually does find it. How do you sort of help guide that balance?
John Hall:
I mean, especially with AI now, you can do like how much AI content should I use? And some people are like, oh, you can’t use any of it. Well, that’s B.S. You can actually use some. You just, you shouldn’t have it as a thought leadership basically source. So AI, if we all use this thought leadership, what I mean like is like the leading content coming from our educational, that’s not a great strategy. But you can have other content that’s curated and also you can repurpose content. We actually created a company called ArticleX.com, so you can check that one out.
A.J. Lawrence:
I’m on the beta list for that.
John Hall:
Yeah, it’s called ArticleX.com. It’s really cool. You’re actually UB a client of this. Matt didn’t mean to sell you on this call but like, and it’s not a crazy expensive software or anything like that, but like so you, when you get a podcast and right now they do insta reels but they’ll be releasing podcasts in YouTube in like two or three weeks. So you’ll be able to take your podcast, just put the link, put your YouTube because I think you do a YouTube as well, you just put it in there, you can customize it and say, hey, this tone, here’s what I’d like to include, here’s outside sources, and all you’re doing is setting a parameter of like the type of style and content you want to create.Well, it takes that link and creates a transcription of the video, but then also creates a new article and embeds that original video, brings in outside sources, optimizes for search, and then basically uploads it to your CMS. So in that example, Google actually is liking that because it’s still original content. You’re just changing the form of it and you’re repurposing it. And it’s not just a transcription, it’s a new article. It’s embedding the original thought in it. Now that’s a way you can use AI in a very creative way that Google is going to like.Now if you said, hey AI, create a YouTube video for me about what entrepreneurs should do in this industry, Google’s not going to like that because an AI should not be creating the thought leadership or initial sourcing of it. AI should be curating and bringing good knowledge together and then presenting in the most optimal way. That’s why article X we started doing that is because we’re like, hey, this is using AI to amplify. And so I would say that what’s going on with AI and different things in the world, the more you can kind of be authentic in that source content. Now when you’re doing PR or other strategies, you don’t have to be like, you can be a little more showy if it’s off site and things like that. But on your site, you want to be the expert, the trusted resource and then look at like your things like LinkedIn, newsletter or other sources that you control, still want to come off very thoughtful and authentic in those.Then as you go, let’s say you get covered in Fortune, they can highlight you in a meaningful way that’s drawing attention, getting people excited about it and things like that. So you just want to make sure that from start to finish, you’re aligning the content so that you’re coming off in the right way, whether it’s on site, off site, and doing it that way, I’d certainly recommend planning that out. Because if you’re just planning on doing something that’s easy with AI or something like that, not many people are winning just doing that right now.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, it’s funny. It almost and the way you put it really kind of remind me a lot of like the programic SEO days when like the first really big things, like a couple of people are like, wait, how did that site. It’s basically the same exact content, just Tennessee versus Memphis versus blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yet they’re ranking. And was like, oh, automated content purely was bad, but relevant automated content was good. And those early days of doing it sounds you know what, your approach is very similar to that. Just with AI, obviously with that, like, okay, cool, you know, you have created something. Now let us break it down into the keyword cluster in a sense, all the branches that come off of that content piece. So that’s pretty cool. That same-same.
John Hall:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s crazy just how like a lot of times, people try and get fancy with the content. I’m just a believer, like trying to do what’s right and trying to come off engaging, doing things natural. As funny as it is, like the old link, like late tactics and things you used to do for especially in search don’t actually get you what you want. You know, 15 years ago, I mean you remember like you do press releases, you could do a bunch of bylines, you could do all these tactics that were like great and then you’d fool them. Yeah, you can’t do it anymore.And so that’s why like we like the word relevancy because the more relevant you are in an industry, the more you’re going to be rewarded through. And that’s why Google, Bing, and everything topical authority became big where it’s like it’s not just about if it’s a big company but do they have topical authority in that space. And so I think the more that we’ve evolved and those people, those smart people at those organizations can catch things, then you can’t get away with this stuff as much. Even so growth hack, but growth hacks now a little more thoughtful. Like the investor approach that I told you about earlier is that like that was one where you’re being thoughtful about how you’re getting in front of the right people in a unique way. That’s to me the more growth hacking these days. Because if you do try and growth hack in this, you know, create. Now there’s a couple like actually I was just doing one the other day where it was like a straight up like old school hacking. Not hacking, but influencing Google in a way. Google will catch on to this in like two to three months and I know they will. So it’s like why would we design a strategy around it? Now granted, for short term benefit we’ll do something but we’re never planning investing significantly in those short term benefits. So no matter what, like yes, if something’s easy you can do it. But the best companies plan on long term strategies earning that thought, earning the credibility, earning the trust. And that’s the people we want to deal with. And that’s why like we’ll invest in a lot of our clients or not a lot but you know, a portion of them because you know they’re wanting to do it the right way. They’re very committed, like the best type of. When someone comes to me, the one I get excited about is someone who truly wants to be an industry leader and they want to do it for the right reasons. They’re like, hey, we treat our employees well, we treat our customers well. Now if they’re like, hey, I’m trying to make a quick buck which in the internet marketing world that we’ve been in the past, you know people who are trying to make a quick buck and they don’t care who they’re going to hurt on the way. We just can’t deal with those people. And they can still try those short term goals, but we just won’t work with them on stuff.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. I mean, having seen the wave after wave of that like, oh, do this. It’s quick, it’s easy. You’ll do this and it almost aligns with sort of the fast buck versus the long term. It seems like once you get past a few years, you realize all the shortcuts have limits. You’re going to pay for them eventually. And then it’s sort of like, how do you really grow something that is relevant? You’re talking about. as talked about, so that mission and employee first. Actually I did see a really good, Stephanie Nadja, they did the employee first job search board was away. They had a really good. They just sold it. They sold it last year. They sold their SaaS. I forget. But the whole idea was that was their discovery was this whole employee first pledge. And that became a discovery because they had an HR semi-related SaaS thing that became very popular. That was decent. But then when they use that, it’s a growth hack. Oh, let’s create something that more encapsulates it. But directionally, it was a good long term sort of play.
John Hall:
I think as long as there’s honesty and kind of the strategy in what you’re trying to do and setting things up for sustainable growth, that’s the healthiest thing you can do. And then also just aligning the content, that’s the common thing I see done poorly is that somebody will do the work. I joke around because like I did a podcast and I was, we had margaritas going just because I was on vacation. I did this podcast and I use the example of like I used to just squeeze a lime and then I’d have to squeeze like 50 limes to make a pitcher of margarita.But then when I got like a juicer and actually like it takes all the lime out, it only took me 10. And I think that that’s the same thing with content is that if you want to kind of make the best use out of it, you got to squeeze that whole lime. And I think that right, like the first part of it, you’ll squeeze a little bit and it’ll be like, hey, we created it, we put on our site. Okay, well did we get it to our sales squeeze a little more. Oh, did we, using our email marketing, squeeze a little more? Did we optimize when we were thinking about that? Did we put the right keywords when it went live? Did we get people and partners to link to it? Oh, we screw it, squeezed it.So I would just say that when you designing a content strategy or executing, it’s not just about the initial like why we’re doing this, but it’s how are we going to maximize the value and align this across the company and those are the companies you see do it. Well, Zapier is a great example. They started from our office, I don’t know, 10, 12 years ago or maybe, no, maybe a little more longer than that. But they’re a multibillion dollar company. And Wade, Mike, Bryan, their founders did a really good job on squeezing the value out of content. And if you look they’re massive content leaders and so that they’re a great example of, you know, they used it, they aligned it. Now people come and follow their content religiously and they have this following that if they do a new product, new launch, they just boom and they amplify it.When you have that, you can just sustainably grow things. You can get a new products. That’s why Apple, when you look at it, Apple’s not extremely profitable because of their hardware right now. They’re profitable because of their subscription revenue and cloud and all this other stuff that they layer on top of it. But they had to first be kind of looked at as a leader. Now they did it through production. Product’s very hard sometimes because it’s hard to differentiate and to communicate it without the right content strategy. Apple just had a phenomenal freaking product. But a lot of times you can can do it through how you’re communicating it and stand out as that leader. And then you have that massive following that when you do new products, new services, new anything like that, you can create additional lines of income just by having that engaged following.
A.J. Lawrence:
Kind of like just to even play on that sort of the different phases of the decision making process a customer goes into. But I think that gets, that might be a little bit geekier but like looking at this so like taking the content and repurposing relevantly content into multiple phases within what you’re trying to do around reaching out, is there anything that you’re kind of seeing out there from a content point of view that sort of the faceless stuff that’s popping up. Seemed to have for a little bit was everywhere and now there’s a few that are really good, but the vast majority of them have faded. What are you seeing that’s really kind of to you standing out?
John Hall:
I guess from standing out from what level? What would be the metric of standing out?
A.J. Lawrence:
Let’s talk because I didn’t really get into sort of personal content around sort of an entrepreneurial creation because I know that’s a lot of what you wrote your book Top of Mind around. But let’s just talk what’s interesting to you from a content point of view that people are doing that’s a little bit different?
John Hall:
I mean, it’s going back to the key thing of what’s different is when people are like aligning it and making the most out of it. Because that’s sort of like the key difference where you say that company is doing well, this company is not doing well is that the common thing is they’re just sporadically doing stuff. Oh, they might do a couple blog posts here, they might do a guide here, they might do an Insta campaign. And so I would say that number one, I know it’s the boring answer, but it’s like just actually setting it up to align across different platforms and setting the strategy up. Well, that’s the one where people are doing it. I’d say 80% plus are actually succeeding with new platforms. A lot of times people want to be like, I remember people are like, oh, TikTok, TikTok this, this. And I was like, well, I mean, I was fortunate to have several friends who were big on Google. I mean, I had one that had 3.4 million followers and they were all into Google and they pretty much had to shut, not shut down the company, but like the value just like in what they build. And so that’s why that alignment, doing things. If one of those platforms or one of those things falls, then that’s just one of your top of the funnel getting people’s attention. And it goes away, then you have these other ones that you can nurture.So I know even when I’m speaking in Q and A, people are like, oh, what, what’s the exciting tool? Or what are you using? I’m like, the problem with, you know, that is that and if I get people excited, then they start focusing on the excitement rather than just doing the foundational elements. This goes back to a book written by a friend that I don’t know if you’ve read the book Essentialism. Essentialism is really good at and the way that it’s written is like focus on what’s essential to see yourself succeed. And the other stuff is just noise. So until you focus on the right things and it gives you an opportunity to do some of those more, whatever exciting things or distracting things, you gotta do that first.And so yeah, I mean you can try different strategies. I mean I like the article X thing, that’s why we created that because I like using AI in ways that make you more efficient and be more scalable. So like that’s the key thing is like if you’re using it to scale yourself in the right way. I think AI is probably the biggest disruptor in content that’s happened in the last 10, 20 years. I mean people could argue different things but like for me it’s very, very disruptive. But it’s also something that if you’re doing it the right way, you can be fairly innovative and you can scale yourself, you can stay in Google and everybody’s good graces.Sometimes people will be like for example, news or glossaries were something that came up, people, we had a few clients where we just did a AI glossary for them and the rankings went up. Now the rankings what went up? Not necessarily exact in that specific target. Well the reason why is because the glossary was so general. It was just give people for like intent, not a high intent. So when you created the glossary we just had to make sure that things were set up on site to actually draw the right people to it. And then what happened afterwards because you also could hurt yourself if you do a too broad of an AI glossary and then people are randomly coming. They’re only spending two seconds on site, they’re bouncing, then your bounce rate goes up. So I would just tell you that AI, there’s huge innovations or there’s things that the nuances do matter. And having a partner or at least somebody internally that can guide you through that, that’s what’s going to really spark innovation. Because it’s going to be innovation without hurting yourself or doing something that can either hurt a relationship with the audience or hurt your view online credibility.
A.J. Lawrence:
Okay, you had some success, you sold a company, you started another company you’re owner and you kind of stepped away from the day to day. You have a cool new company coming up, Article X, you have a couple of your whole co-properties that you may be selling off, so some nice capital events coming up in your future. You have some pretty good success as an entrepreneur. How do you go about defining your personal success as an entrepreneur?
John Hall:
I mean, I think that there’s a variety of different metrics you can use. It used to be just money when I was younger, but now it’s not money. But that’s a part. Anybody who says money is not a part of their happiness, it’s kind of just trying to be cheesy in a way because money is a way to, I mean, you can donate your money and be happier, you know. So it’s like, I still think money has a big part of financial success but that was the old metric.I think that family, friends is another metric where, you know, are you able to spend a certain amount of time at joining lives and have the respect and relationships that matter? I’ve met a lot of billionaires that don’t have friends, divorced, their kids don’t talk to them anymore. That’s not success to me. And you have a billion dollars, I mean, 10 years, 15 years ago, I would have been like, wow, that person’s extremely successful.I think that respecting the industry, are they looked at as an industry leader? I think there’s a part of when you have legacy that you actually moved needles, you helped mentor people, you helped grow something to provide money for other families and things like that or in the livelihood. So I think that I look at it in different ways on how you’re building things as well and that balance.And so, I look at in like six or seven categories. I look financial success, friends and family, respect in relationships, what we actually do that’s positive. I always call, say net positives. Like are you a company that actually calls a net positive or net negative, you know, ftx, net negative obviously. We were net negative. I mean, what they did was innovative and successful from initially a financial look, but they actually caused a lot of harm.And so I think that I look at it the opposite is like, what can you do? That’s why we invest in Gab Wireless, which is a great company for kids technology. They basically help kids form a good relationship with tech, which I think is one of the major issues now. Are we going to make money on that deal? Yes, I’m very confident their success are, you know, so I don’t want to say that there’s not benefit there. But there’s also benefit that it’s actually having a net positive. And so if people can look at that as cheesy, but I look at things just a little different, that there’s ways to live your life, ways to run companies. If you’re a hardworking entrepreneur and you’re smart, you can fail 20 times the 21st time, you’ll be successful and have money. I’ve had friends that gone bankrupt a couple times with some big plays and then their next one after that. So I’m confident that if people work hard, they’re smart and they’re going to make money in some way. So then it goes to how are you doing that? What are these other metrics that matter? But you know, we still have our performance metrics metrics as a company as well.
A.J. Lawrence:
So given all that, what would be like off the top for you, where would you like to see everything you’re doing go?
John Hall:
I mean, I would say just continuously working with the-I like what we’re doing. Growth marketing is never going to go away. Organic strategy is never going to go away. It’s not like some rocket science. People are going to want to earn credibility and trust. So I like the realm. We have unique relationships in media and different places and no matter what will evolve with time. So it’s like I like the work and where we’re going, but then it’s like, okay, well can you one, make money? And two, can you be proud of what you do? And then I think, yes, we can make money. We’ve already shown that. But now, I go to events like you mentioned, Baby Bathwater. Hollis is a very good friend and somebody I think a lot of and he’s trying to make that organization be very, the quality of people be allowed more thoughtful and looking out for each other than the average entrepreneur.Same thing with Summit Series. Same thing with MMT. Same things with EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year event. Same thing with Capital Camp. If you look at anywhere I’m speaking these days, it’s where good people are. And what I mean by good people, like it’s not my job to judge them, but I would say that the people that I look for are people that deserve and earn and that can actually you want to see at the top because you know it’s going to have a good effect on their company and industry. So I tend to gravitate towards those events that have those types of people.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, I look forward to seeing some of that as you move forward, what’s the best way for people to learn more about what you’re doing, about Relevance, about Article X? Where should they go?
John Hall:
Yeah, I would just say go to the sites initially like relevance.com calendar.com, articleX.com. I’m on the board of Adogy.com. Gab Wireless, I mentioned they’re a great company. I’m just more of an investor there. But from our standpoint is that like, we’ve got a lot of cool things going on and then if something seems to stands out, then just go via LinkedIn and say, hey, like, I listen to this podcast. Here’s you know how I think you can be helpful and just be like clear on the messaging. Because I get a lot of outreach and I want to be that person that will respond to people, but at the same time is that if someone’s just like, hey, how are you doing? It’s like hard for me to respond unless I can actually have like an action step or look out for someone.
A.J. Lawrence:
So very cool. We’ll make sure all the links are in our show notes, go out in the email, and then also just our social. But I’m looking forward to getting off the wait list on Article X because it does sound really cool myself.
John Hall:
Yeah. And you should be able to get on there for it for insta reels. Like, that’s not a wait list at this point. If you have problems, just ping me or message me and I’ll make sure somebody at customer service gets you. But podcasts and YouTube will be on the waitlist for the next couple of weeks.
A.J. Lawrence:
I’ll do that. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening today. Please, if you enjoyed today’s episode or if you hated it, leave us a review of your podcast listening platform of choice. It really does help us and it helps other entrepreneurs find out about the show and listen to cool entrepreneurs like John so they can help with their own journeys. All right, everyone, talk to you soon. Bye.