Robert Rose Founder of The Content Advisory

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today, we are talking to Robert Rose, founder of The Content Advisory. And we discuss cutting through the noise when everyone is fighting for attention, delivering content that builds trust, and the importance of patience when running on a lean budget. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Robert Rose at 00:00:33) Music from my generation is pumping you up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:37) Oh, yeah. It's a good generation. You know? It is.

(Robert Rose at 00:00:40) I happen to think it's my favorite, but, you know, I'm biased that way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) You know, I was talking to somebody about music the other day, and they're saying, oh, how they like older music. And I told them, I was like, you know, it's not really about age. It seems every generation has a sound. And so, you know, everything repeats in history, and you can just kind of find the sound that you like. You know?

(Robert Rose at 00:01:03) Yeah. You know, if I'm completely honest, the music today, aside from some of the more, I'll call them rock and roll bands, the pop music today really bums me out quite a bit. It's, you know, it's so derivative. Right? So everything is so derivative. You ever see, have you seen that? There's a YouTube video that's going around that talks about the "oh, e o, oh, e o." You know, the sort of that's like in every single pop song these days?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:39) Yeah. The corporate high energy.

(Robert Rose at 00:01:40) Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And it, every, you know, from every Britney Spears to, you know, whatever it is, whoever the pop star du jour is, it's, you know. And if you grew up during the eighties, you know, I mean, you can argue that pop music was better or worse, but it was at least different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:01) Yeah. Like, when you started, I was on like Offspring and some of the rock stuff, and then when the Britney's and some of the poppy stuff started coming out, that was just such a, we have this chain of vastly different sounds from, like, you had metal, and then you had rock, and then you had this pop, and they were all very different, unique sounds. So, chief troublemaker, man. Come on. That's awesome. Best title ever.

(Robert Rose at 00:02:32) Yes. It's one I've had for a little bit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:34) And I'm assuming it's self-assigned.

(Robert Rose at 00:02:38) Oh, well, you know, I mean, it's, yes, it is self-assigned, but it's maybe, it's earned. How about that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:45) It's earned. Oh, man. Are we talking pranks?

(Robert Rose at 00:02:46) No. I'm not much one for pranks. I tend to, in all of the jobs I've ever had and as a consultant, which is what I do for a living, I tend to be good at throwing bombs into the middle of the conference room and just sort of, you know, sitting back and watching the, you know, trying to figure out how to put all the pieces back together again. So I have been called this a couple of times, but then, you know, it just seemed like a cute way to not call myself a, you know? I mean, you know, you see all the titles these days, the ninja this or the, you know, whatever. And it was something like, at the end of the day, I do marketing, and I just refuse to take myself too seriously. You know? I just, this is, we're not curing cancer here. Right? We're trying to figure out how to persuade people to do stuff. And, you know, ultimately, my job is quite, you know, it's quite a first-world challenge. So, you know, I'm just not gonna take myself too seriously.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:06) Yeah. And why should you? Like, as a creative, your brain iterates through multiple perspectives, and sometimes it's fun just to throw one out into the world and see how people respond.

(Robert Rose at 00:04:17) Exactly. That's exactly right. Right? Just to, you know, so if you're gonna do interesting things, um, you know, which, you know, marketing should be is what marketing should be all about is doing interesting things that people find valuable. And too many times it's not these days. And so, you know, as you start doing that, it just makes life better. It just makes your job more interesting about, you know, going to work every day rather than figuring out how to incrementally get one more SEO, you know, thing. Oh, god. Right. You know what I mean.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:01) It's like that again? Yeah. Oh, man.

(Robert Rose at 00:05:05) Right. Right. Time to make the donuts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:08) I would get in trouble in middle school specifically. I would do what they call, I would just state the obvious. I would just say things that are obvious to me, and sometimes they would be offensive or shocking, but they were never not true. Right. I'm like, we're not arguing. No one's arguing that this isn't true. They're just saying I shouldn't be saying it.

(Robert Rose at 00:05:31) That's right. That's right. He's not wrong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:37) We just don't want the 13-year-old to say that. You know?

(Robert Rose at 00:05:40) Exactly. Or we don't expect the 13-year-old to say it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:43) Yeah. They say, why do you want to be a computer engineer? Why do you want to write code? And one of the reasons is, well, I enjoyed it, but I also wanted to make a lot of money. And they're like, why do you want to make a lot of money? And I'm like, because it looks like it sucks being a teacher, and they don't make a lot of money. That's right. Like that, you know, parent-teacher conference.

(Robert Rose at 00:05:59) That's right. That's exactly right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:01) So, I like your, I was reading some of your propaganda. No. I'm just kidding. I was reading some of your research.

(Robert Rose at 00:06:13) It is. It's all propaganda. It's all propaganda.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:16) Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, you know, I was throwing that term around really loosely. And one day someone's like, do you know what propaganda means? And they created this spark of doubt. And I was like, oh, okay. I'm gonna go see what Wikipedia or the Internet has to say. And, you know, it was a little harder, a little more harshly worded than I usually use it, but I still stick with it. Like, I still, I think it sounds good.

(Robert Rose at 00:06:41) Yeah. It's but it's what it is. I mean, you know, in varying degree, it's not, you know, we're not trying to overthrow a government or be a government or influence the cultural responses of a populace, but it's still trying to sell something. You know what I mean? We're still not dealing with facts. You know? We marketers, you know, this is something that gets me in trouble all the time is I'll say, you know, marketers, we're not in the business of facts. We're not in the business of what's actually true. We're in the business of what's supposed to be true. And so we're here to sell you something that is a vision of something that is supposed to be true, not what actually is true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:23) That's exactly right. Yeah. You sell, like, man, you got me. You, I get it. Yeah. We're on the same page. The words just escaped me.

(Robert Rose at 00:07:35) It's like, you know, the example I use all the time is, you know, you see the commercial for the iPad and somebody's flicking their finger and designing a PowerPoint on their iPad and they're putting on their album and then they're editing the music and they're throwing the soundtrack on there, and nobody in the world has ever, ever done that. Nobody does that. Nobody designs their PowerPoint and puts in a soundtrack using their iPad. They just don't do it. That's not true. But, of course, it's supposed to be true. And, technically, you probably could do that, but nobody does it. It's not what's actually true, but it's the vision of what could be true if you own this iPad. So that's, and that's marketing. And in writ large, that is what marketing is all about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:23) You know, that's the only way, the only true way to move a group of people or a product or anything forward is the visualization of what could be.

(Robert Rose at 00:08:32) Exactly. I'm telling you a story. All I'm trying to do is tell you a story and change your beliefs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:37) Yeah. And then I like, you know, story mapping. That's something we do a lot here. We are not even a marketing company. We map our stories as ways to communicate what we want to do, the projects we want to take on.

(Robert Rose at 00:08:49) I've stolen that. I've, you know, I stole that term. I mean, my background being in screenwriting is something that I took that from, but certainly, I took it from, you know, the extreme programming movement of the nineties and certainly what is lean and agile software development these days. There's that concept of story mapping and moving people through a set of user interfaces is exactly what we're supposed to be doing in marketing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:17) Oh, that's a nice fresh perspective. That's good. So I've noticed this sort of, or at least it's looked to me like this rise in content, and I gotta be honest. I wasn't on the content bandwagon for a long time because I was more focused on software. And then when I got into an executive role of being a CTO, all of a sudden, the content is important because it's the way people learn. It's the way to distribute information at scale. And so all of a sudden, it went from being something that was, like, to one of the most important things that a business could probably do.

(Robert Rose at 00:09:57) Well, you know, as you might expect, I would argue that, right, you know, for that, because that's what I do. And it is, I think, the, we have spent our adult lives as businesses, so let's call it the last 20 years, trying to figure out how to make interruptive advertising and marketing work. And it's just not anymore. And so the question becomes, how do you, in a world where everyone is the media, everybody creates content, not just our competitors, but everybody, including our sons, our daughters, us, everybody is part of the media these days. And so the noise is loud and the competition for attention and trust is high. How do you actually get someone's attention and hold it to the point where they believe what you're trying to have them believe, the propaganda? And the answer to that is you've got to develop trust, and really the only way to do that is to deliver value through the content you're creating. And so it has to go beyond a simple sales message or a marketing message or a call to action or something like that, and you've got to be able to deliver content that builds trust and rises above the noise. Otherwise, you just get lost in it. And so, you know, I mean, Seth Godin has said that it's the only marketing that's left really, you know, and I'm not sure about that because I still love advertising and I still love all forms of marketing and advertising. But what I have found is that companies that really understand this, really understand the value of creating content that builds an engaged audience, truly understand how to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:53) Yeah. So you build trust through education. That happens through, around, content.

(Robert Rose at 00:11:59) That's right. You know? Or inspiration or entertainment or whatever it is. You're just building trust in what I'm trying to, you know, the propaganda ultimately, quote, unquote, is trying to sell you an approach. Right? I want to sell you a better way of doing something, and that better way of doing something maybe is quite simply just, you know, having a better mint in your mouth, or it may be, quite frankly, building a better generator that's going to run your Fortune 100 business.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:27) Yeah. Have you been aware of the Grant Cardone's videos and things like that? Have you come across him?

(Robert Rose at 00:12:36) Oh, you don't like him? I do not. I'm not a fan.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:40) All right. I want to know. I'm interested.

(Robert Rose at 00:12:44) I think he, in many ways, represents the dark side of what I think of grabbing attention using content these days. You know, some of the things that I see him doing, you know, look, I read his book, and there are some good things to learn from that book.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:00) The 10x book?

(Robert Rose at 00:13:02) Yeah. Exactly. And I think there's some interesting foundational types of things that, you know, have been talked about in other books, by the way. These are not terribly original ideas. But the idea of, you know, some of the things that he does in the way that he promotes his event, you know, for example, saying, you know, hey, we just had, you know, right after the hurricane, which was devastating to so many, he had the post-hurricane special where, you know, you could get in. So a lot of the things that he does to rise above the noise, which is simply be controversial for controversy's sake, they grate on me. They represent to me what the dark side of this idea is of rising above the noise through content, which is being controversial and letting the controversy be that which spreads your message. I, you know, in many ways, it's not unlike what this Yiannopoulos guy does. And so he uses the controversy of having very, very, very polarizing opinions to spread, to let the world spread his brand. And, you know, so basically, both of them operate kind of from the all publicity is good publicity idea, and I don't believe that's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:25) Yeah. Where I got lost on it was when he was talking about the haters that you need more haters. He's like, double your haters, triple your haters. I was like, because they'll talk about you because they hate you. And I'm like, well...

(Robert Rose at 00:14:39) Right. It's, but it's, yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't have, you know, you shouldn't, one of the things that I talk about a lot is the idea of having a distinct point of view on the world and being proud of that point of view to the point where you're going to be wrong for some people. You know? It is not uncommon for me to run across people who think content marketing is a bunch of crap and, you know, and I'm selling some sort of snake oil or that sort of thing. And I believe in the process, and I have a point of view on it. And I'm more than willing to have people disagree with that or, you know, or just not be into it and, quite frankly, you know, be a quote, unquote hater, and that's okay. But, ultimately, I'm not trying to take advantage of creating a false controversial opinion in order to build a hater community that will talk about me. That's what I think Cardone does that I truly find distasteful, you know, is using things like the hurricane or those kinds of things to create marketing materials, which he knows will create people who will spread it and share it and go, this is disgusting. I can't stand this, et cetera, et cetera, which will get him clicks and will ultimately get him people that might purchase his class or whatever he's selling. That is just, to me, wrong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:12) Yeah. Well, thank you. I like the perspective. Like, I find new content all the time, and I'm always like, oh, I want to know what people think about this person just because I'm super interested. Right? And then also because his book came out, you know, and then also Gary V has a book out, I think, right around now.

(Robert Rose at 00:16:31) Gary V is another example of this. Right? I mean, yeah. I happen to think, look, I look at what Gary V is doing, and it's not my cup of tea.

(Robert Rose at 00:16:39)
What his whole hustle thing and the whole, you know, all of that is not my groove. But at least it's a point of view, and I don't begrudge him all of the wonderful success and attention that he's gotten because he believes it. Right? And he believes in that stuff and is out there using it. Now, a lot of people go, "Oh, Gary V," and they have really negative reactions.

(Robert Rose at 00:17:04)
But I think that's different. I look at Cardone and Gary V in very, very different lenses. Right? Gary V is out there talking about stuff that he believes in, and you might disagree with it. And for me, it's I don't resonate with it at all, but it's not for me. It's for the people who really resonate with his message, and I think that's great.

(Robert Rose at 00:17:25)
And good luck. God bless. I hope he does well. Cardone's a different story. Those guys are using negativity and negative energy to draw in their own, you know, sort of nefarious purpose. That truly is propaganda if you look at that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:40)
Yeah. You're actually right. There you go. You're living up to the actual definition of the word. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:44)
Right. Yeah. But the one thing, so from Gary V, I kind of like to take little pieces. I look to see what's out there so I understand what's going on in the world. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:55)
And then I find little pieces. I'm always focused on the positive. You know? I find little pieces, like, all right, well, I could see where they're coming from from this point. I could see what's happening from here. Because there's always a little nugget to take away from everyone. Right?

(Robert Rose at 00:18:10)
Absolutely. One of the best sales campaigns I ever heard came from Gary V. It was one of the best marketing campaigns I ever heard in my life. It was amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:20)
Which one was that?

(Robert Rose at 00:18:21)
He was talking about his Wine Library one time in a speech that I happened to be at. I was speaking at the same event, so I went into the room and listened to him talk. And he was talking about this campaign he had done when he was selling wine and how he was using Facebook to do micro-targeting. And he said what he would do is he would come up with this idea. So, for example, he wanted to sell these particular wines.

(Robert Rose at 00:18:53)
And so he would write a blog post about the top five Princeton graduate favorite wines. Right? So, you know, basically the top five wines for Princeton graduates. Totally niche. Right? Just, I mean, so micro-niche. It's like, wow, that is a blog post that is targeted to a very, very focused set of people. And then he would take that blog post in which he would write out, you know, of course, the wines that were wonderful for those people who graduated from Princeton as an example. And then he would go to Facebook, and he would promote that blog post, and he would use Facebook's targeting capabilities to target people who live in New Jersey, are graduates of Princeton, and like wine.

(Robert Rose at 00:19:36)
And then he would sell wine that way. He would basically hyper-target people to go to a blog post in which he was hoping to really get a lot of higher conversion rates. I just thought that was a wonderful way to use content and direct advertising to really get hyper-focused around, you know, micro-campaigns, if you will.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:59)
Yeah. No, the micro-campaigns are amazing. The Facebook targeting, you know what? They had some targeting, and it's interesting because Facebook changes, right? So they used to be able to target people based on any page they liked or any company, but then they removed some of those abilities where the page had to be a certain size or a company had to be a certain size.

(Robert Rose at 00:20:18)
That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:19)
So what's getting you excited these days? What's on your agenda that you're really pumped about?

(Robert Rose at 00:20:25)
Well, you know, the new book is out, of course. And so it's called Killing Marketing. And what has got me sort of out on the circuit and working with my clients and the thing that I'm spending a lot of time with folks on is this idea of how to scale the idea of building audiences and using, you know, really to the theme of your show, this idea of how do I start using first-party data? In other words, my audiences to make my entire business better. In other words, how do I start using content marketing as a business strategy to use the audience that I'm delivering value to, that wants to hear from me, that wants to engage with me, and use that data because it's more valuable than that which I can scrape from just, you know, web visits or whatever, because it's being willingly given to me, and use that first-party data to make my business better, you know, holistically.

(Robert Rose at 00:21:23)
Right? Whether it be to get better effectiveness, like we were just talking about, on an ad media buy, or to get better research into kind of the products I should be developing or where I should be selling them. In other words, looking at regionality or those kinds of things, helping to deliver better, you know, customers that stay longer, and really looking at the different ways that having access to a first-party audience that is engaged with the content that I'm creating can provide all kinds of different and holistic value to a business.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:58)
Yeah. That's a smart thing to be writing about. Is it sold out?

(Robert Rose at 00:22:05)
Oh, well, you know, it's just stuff I'm doing. I mean, you know, I do one of three things. I'm writing a lot. I'm teaching workshops, either privately or in public settings, or I'm working on a consulting basis with clients. And probably in the reverse order that I just gave it. I do most of my business is consulting with clients, and then secondarily, working on public or private workshops where I'm just doing that as an education piece, and then thirdly, writing. But the book is out. The book has been out since September. It's called Killing Marketing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:41)
Awesome. And did you write that by yourself?

(Robert Rose at 00:22:43)
I did not. No. I wrote it with my pal and colleague, Joe Pulizzi, who is the founder and CEO of the Content Marketing Institute. He has, since the company was acquired last year, taken a bit of a leave of absence and a bit of a sabbatical. But I still maintain I'm the chief strategy advisor with the Content Marketing Institute. But yeah, he and I wrote the book together and released it in September of last year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:13)
And so what's the purpose of the Institute?

(Robert Rose at 00:23:17)
Our whole goal is really to evangelize and, to bring that word back, propagandize the process and approach of content marketing in large enterprises. You know, we mostly focus on bigger companies that are, you know, global in nature, multiple products, siloed in many ways. Larger brands tend to be our specialty, and our mission is really to evangelize the use of content marketing as a process, as a strategy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:50)
Now, when you work with the larger brands, do you do bids or how does that work?

(Robert Rose at 00:23:55)
No. Typically not. We are, you know, most of the business that affects my part of the business, you know, so as a media company, CMI, its business model is one, a big event, Content Marketing World, which we do every September in Cleveland, and that's probably 5,000 people. And then we have the publication side, which includes a print magazine and the blog itself. And then there's the business I run, which is consulting and advisory, which is really the consulting and workshop part of that. And most of the business that we do through that is, quite frankly, coming in through inbound through, you know, not to draw too much irony here, but through the content.

(Robert Rose at 00:24:28)
Yeah. So through the content we create, we get interest from large companies who want to, you know, who need help operationalizing this thing called content marketing and either want a workshop for their team or they want to actually have consulting help to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:01)
So you'll produce a bunch of content about the effectiveness of workshops or how workshops work or all the stuff around workshops, and then people will pick up on it and reach out to you and say, "Hey, we'll do a workshop."

(Robert Rose at 00:25:11)
Yeah. It's broader than that, I would say. I mean, so the real thrust of it is, you know, if you look at Content Marketing Institute's blog, you'll see it's basically everything around the best practices and tips and tricks and all kinds of things around content marketing holistically. Right? And so, you know, basically, we are there to evangelize and look at the effectiveness of how to develop content marketing strategies that actually work.

(Robert Rose at 00:25:45)
You know, basically, everything from the most granular, what kind of headlines and blog posts and articles and white papers and webinars should you be doing kind of content, to how should you be structuring your teams and approaches kind of thing. And through the consumption of that content, we get, you know, we get people from all parts of the organization coming in and saying, "Hey, this really resonated with me. How do we do this? Do you offer workshops or do you offer training or do you offer consulting to help companies actually do what you're talking about here?" And that ends up then translating into either consulting or education projects.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:27)
Yeah. I like what you're doing because it's an easy thing to believe in because it works, right? And it's valuable, and that's what companies need. They need stuff that works and that brings them value. So I'm all on your team with this one. Nice. I have a question for you about, so we have put together a world tour. It's 16 cities, and we're doing the show live in theaters all over the world. And it's going to be a TED Talk meets a drone show, like you saw over at the Olympics, meets South by Southwest with a DJ mixing the sessions between the content. It's like a one-night event. Somebody called it a technology circus, but I'm like, uh, no, we probably won't call it that. But it's basically just this high-energy TV.

(Robert Rose at 00:27:23)
Seen the Pop-Up magazines? Have you seen the Pop-Up magazines that have been around some of the cities? No. Oh, you should check that out, man. They're really cool. Just Google Pop-Up Magazine. They're, it's a group that does this. They're doing shows here in Los Angeles. They started in San Francisco, and they've been doing them here in Los Angeles, and then they've started to branch out into places like New York and Chicago. And it's basically think like a This American Life or those kinds of radio shows, but done in a live setting where you've got journalists and performers, musicians, and they do a 90-minute show that is kind of a mix of, you know, it's kind of mixing TED Talks with multimedia, with all kinds of, they're really, I went to one here in Los Angeles. They were, it was really cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:15)
Oh, that's awesome.

(Robert Rose at 00:28:16)
Yeah. Yeah. So I love this idea. Yeah. So, yeah. Go, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead with what you were saying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23)
Yes. That's what we're doing. We're doing the show live. And just like the drones and everything are going to be super cool. And we're having, have you seen the Boston Dynamics?

(Robert Rose at 00:28:31)
Uh, yeah. Those are cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:33)
Dude, everyone's going to come to it to see that thing.

(Robert Rose at 00:28:37)
Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:38)
Try to kick it over. Yeah. Slash like Ripley's. When you walk in, there's going to be things in the display case. It's going to be awesome. Yeah.

(Robert Rose at 00:28:43)
Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:45)
Yeah. So what, first of all, what do you think of that? Well, it sounds like you think it's pretty sweet, right?

(Robert Rose at 00:28:50)
I think it's an awesome idea. I mean, if I were going to do an event, that's exactly the kind of event I would want to do. That's exactly what you're describing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:59)
Yeah. So then we'll probably need some help with some marketing stuff when we go there. So maybe you'll help us out with that.

(Robert Rose at 00:29:07)
Absolutely. You let me know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:11)
And then we'll leave it. Although, I'll tell you what, though. That little drones flying around and that Boston Dynamics dog, those videos, this whole event's going to go crazy viral.

(Robert Rose at 00:29:20)
Oh, yeah. It'll be fantastic because you'll have all kinds of video and cool stuff to show and, you know, so even if the first one you get, you know, X number of people to show up, you know, the second one and third one, once word starts to get out about all the cool stuff that you've got going on here, then it'll be crazy popular.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:40)
Yeah. And we have the awesomeness of the fact that we have all these listeners from the show, and then we have all these guests who are residing in all these cities. So we have instant connections to the local influencers. We're going to go to the colleges and talk to their computer science departments. I'm going to go to a bunch of press, you know, leading up to the event. And the event will be sold out at every single one because we'll structure the tickets so that we pack the house no matter what. Right. We're smart. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:13)
Yeah. So we're excited and any help, we're just kind of talking to everyone and say, "Hey, man. If you know any ideas or help or creativity," because to pull off a 16-city show, we are going to need a lot of very bright, talented people.

(Robert Rose at 00:30:31)
Yes. You are. Yeah. You are. No doubt about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:35)
So we have, we've been asking, a large part of our audience is computer science engineers, right? Kids of that nature. Usually between 17 and 25. That's probably 40% of our audience. And a lot of them, they're either building robots or they're building software for a startup and very bootstrapped, you know, noodles in their dorm room type situation. And they all have very little money, and they want to get the most exposure for the project that they're kind of working on. So a hypothetical situation I'm throwing at you, they have $10 and, let's say, a mind-controlled drone. It's a drone that they fly with their mind. Right? What do they do? How do they spend that $10 to kind of get the word out and make this mind-controlled drone a business?

(Robert Rose at 00:31:28)
Well, a lot of that depends on where they are in their development. In other words, what's the goal here? Is the goal to get more funding, or is the goal to start selling the actual product? And let's assume it's the latter. Let's assume that it's a, you know, that they actually have a product, a finished product ready to go, and they're looking for leads to actually sell this thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:51)
Correct.

(Robert Rose at 00:31:52) If I only had $10, and that is a very small budget, I think I would spend most of it on getting whoever my internal person was, my CTO probably, writing opportunities and content opportunities in big publications. Right? So it's almost entirely a PR budget, if you will, but a PR budget not focused on publicizing the company, but rather publicizing our new idea here, which is mind-controlled drones, and having someone write about it. So getting an article into Harvard Business Review and to Fast Company and to Wired and to TechCrunch and, you know, all of those places, and getting as much exposure as I could, bringing them back into a really cool and awesome content-oriented website, you know, which is, call it a blog, call it whatever, but really basically bringing them into the details of this and teaching people why it's so great and how it's going to work and videos and all that stuff.

(Robert Rose at 00:33:04) So I would spend some money on building just an awesome center of gravity—call it a website or whatever. But most of the money I would spend on trying to get coverage out on the big consumer magazines that would pull in leads.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:19) Nice. I love that strategy. I'm on board.

(Robert Rose at 00:33:24) Yeah, it's not going to go far. $10 is not going to go far, sadly, these days. But, you know, you look here. Money, all it is, is an effect on time.

(Robert Rose at 00:33:38) Right? So the more money you have, the shorter time period you can do stuff. And so everything I just said you could also do organically. It's just going to take longer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:47) That is very true.

(Robert Rose at 00:33:48) So the more money you have, you can just do more of it in a shorter time period. And, you know, like all your audience, I'm sure, that run the math, there is a declining—you know, there is a crossover point at some point where more money doesn't actually shorten the time. But, you know, until you reach that crossover point, basically the addition of more budget just shortens the time with which you can start generating more leads. And so the real trick for you as a startup, as someone who's just launching a product into the marketplace, is to balance how quickly you need stuff to happen, which is based on how differentiated you think your technology really is, versus how patient you can be in terms of getting you and your ideas out into the marketplace. And if you can be patient, you don't have to spend a lot of money. But if your stuff is, like, there's a lot of fast followers or there's a lot of people who are in your space, then you need to spend the money to do things quickly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:51) Excellent advice.

(Robert Rose at 00:34:52) Yep. Like mind-controlled drones. If I had a mind-controlled drone, I'd be taking my time because I can't imagine there are many people who are going to be putting a product into the marketplace really quickly here. I mean, but maybe I'm wrong. I, you know, look.

(Robert Rose at 00:35:06) I don't know much about this space, and you'll tell me, you'll tell me, "Oh no, there's, like, five guys that can do this tomorrow." I'm like, "Oh, fantastic. Yeah, I'm one of them."

(Robert Rose at 00:35:15) Yeah. Well, okay. There you go. All right. You know?

(Robert Rose at 00:35:18) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:18) Call them and—

(Robert Rose at 00:35:19) Be corrected.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:20) That's only because both the drone exists. Programmable drones exist.

(Robert Rose at 00:35:25) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:25) And the devices to read your mind to play video games exist, so you just mix them. Like, it's just a matter of sitting down for a weekend and mixing them.

(Robert Rose at 00:35:33) Sure. Yeah. Getting all those Arduinos to work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:37) Yeah. I just don't have a—I don't have a—I have no interest in a mind-controlled drone company business. Like, I don't—that's not—

(Robert Rose at 00:35:46) I would—Spider-Man villain. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:51) Oh, man. Well, thank you so much, Robert, for bringing the value. It was amazing hanging out and talking with you.

(Robert Rose at 00:35:57) Absolutely. My pleasure, my friend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:00) Yeah. And if people want to find out more about you or buy your book, how do they go about that?

(Robert Rose at 00:36:04) You can just go to robertrose.net, and stuff is there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:09) Stuff is there. I love the alliteration, by the way.

(Robert Rose at 00:36:11) Yeah. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:12) Thank you. Hi, I'm Rose, Robert Rose.

(Robert Rose at 00:36:16) Yes. Oh, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this, get the word out. Thank you, guys, so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:30) You guys are the absolute best.