How The Content Studio Serves High-Growth B2B SaaS Founders with GoDaddy as a Flagship Client (Interview with CEO Tommy Walker)

Introduction and Tommy Walker's Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Tommy Walker. He's the founder of The Content Studio, a content marketing consultancy for high growth B2B SaaS startups and enterprises. Before that, he was the first marketing hire at Shopify Plus and Global Editor in Chief at QuickBooks. His long term goal for The Content Studio is to release training for advanced content marketers. Tommy, you ready to take us to the top?

Tommy Walker

00:19>> Let's do it.

Joining Shopify Plus Pre-IPO

Nathan Latka

00:20Alright. So what year did you join Shopify?

Tommy Walker

00:23>> I was there pre IPO. So it was like 2014, 2015. Yeah. Late two thousand fourteen.

Nathan Latka

00:29And what was like when you were going through the interview process, what was like the key metric they asked you about, hey, can you increase this?

Tommy Walker

00:35>> I didn't have an interview process. I was recruited. So, Shopify was really early days back then. Was still not being taken seriously as cloud e commerce wasn't really a thing back then. So I was brought in from cxl.com and really it was just a conversation, you know, hey, you seem like you know what you're talking about on the website that you're currently writing for. We like you, let's make this happen.

Nathan Latka

01:04So that was, call it 2014, 2015 up through 2017. By the way, I didn't know, it's a small world. Pep just bought a ticket. I've always pronounced his name wrong, but I think it's Pep. He bought a ticket to my event down here in Austin next week because winter is taking off, he's doing some exciting things with his new company. So are you still close with him?

Tommy Walker

01:23>> Oh, yeah. Close is relative, but yes, we talk on a regular basis and yeah, no, Pep's great. We can edit that out. Yeah. Pep and I are close. It's awesome. Still talk That's to each great.

The Shopify Plus Content Strategy

Nathan Latka

01:35No, big, big fan of him. Okay. Yeah. So you're you're I mean, you were very much in the space if you are it looks like you were editor in chief there back in 2013. So Shopify recruits you. What was the focus? I mean, what were like, what were you graded on sort of each quarter?

Tommy Walker

01:48>> It's it's really interesting. At the time, it was like the company was so scrappy at the time that it was like, let's produce content, let's get traffic, let's just get a foothold and establish a foothold as a thought leader in this space. So when I was there, especially when I got into the marketing on the Shopify Plus side, it was let's create content, let's make a splash. Like let's, the whole thing was breaking down the enterprise.

02:15>> So really at the time it wasn't as metrics focused as it is now most likely. But it certainly was like, let's make our impact and make our presence known within the space, which is like kind of hard to quantify at this point, but certainly, I mean, was there for the first 1,500 customers, the only marketing hire until the first 1,500 customers. So we did something What

Nathan Latka

02:39was the initial content plan? What were you doing?

Return Visitors as the North Star Metric

Tommy Walker

02:41>> Sure. So the metric that I care the most about is return visitors. And the overall content plan, we had a few different things that we were looking at. Primarily, we were doing some SEO focused stuff. We were doing a lot more thought leadership pieces, but the way that I had structured my team, also had an away team. So I had a team of people doing guest blogging in a number of different areas, as well as doing

03:05>> a lot of podcasting at the time. I was becoming a guest on multiple podcasts and sort of championing this whole philosophy of what happens when the software gets out of the way. It's hard to believe now, but at the time nobody was taking cloud e commerce software seriously. So we started to focus on the meta narrative of the blog was what happens when e commerce software gets out of the way? What are the things that you

03:32>> can focus on now that you don't have to worry about time or budget or technical restraints? So that was kind of the narrative. We were shaping a narrative at the time and that's really where a lot of the focus was.

Nathan Latka

03:47And Tommy, what did you use to measure return visitors?

Tommy Walker

03:50>> Just Google Analytics.

Nathan Latka

03:52Okay. So when you left, what were like the weekly active readers, I guess?

Tommy Walker

03:57>> Yeah. It was right around the 100,000 mark. It wasn't too crazy, but it was just crazy enough.

Nathan Latka

04:06That was weekly readers that were coming back or monthly?

Tommy Walker

04:09>> Yeah. Weekly.

Nathan Latka

04:10That's great. Interesting. So why leave?

Tommy Walker

04:15>> Shopify was great. It's a great company. It was growing really fast at the time and it was fun until it wasn't for me is really what it came down to. Mean, it's still a great company.

Nathan Latka

04:28What didn't you enjoy about it?

Tommy Walker

04:31>> Wow, this is tough. It was the speed at which it was growing. And at the time, honestly, was a lot more arrogant and thought that I was owed more than I really was.

Nathan Latka

04:46Like you wanted more options?

Tommy Walker

04:47>> Yeah. Wanted, well, I wanted more options. I wanted more clout. And what it came down to was just that I thought I was doing more than I actually was, or that I was capable of more than I was at the time. So, wow, nobody's ever asked me this before, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

05:05Well, I mean, everyone's going to be thinking this goes at Shopify in the prime years, you should have bought an equity stock and it should be on like living in a massive mansion right now, like rolling the money. So I have to understand why is that not the case?

Tommy Walker

05:15>> Yeah, no, certainly. So I was pre IPO. I definitely had quite a bit of pre IPO shares. But yeah, what it came down to is really, was arrogant at the time, thought that I knew what I was doing a little bit more, thought I was owed more than I actually was.

05:36>> And I left. I left on my own accord, but I certainly was was not as not as mature as I would be now.

Nathan Latka

05:46I would handle the situation very spending monthly on content, like paying writers to see the spin up writing and all this stuff?

Tommy Walker

05:52>> Probably about 10 to 12, 10 to 12,000.

Building the QuickBooks Content Function

Nathan Latka

05:55Interesting. Okay. What's the next step? You leave and then what?

Tommy Walker

05:59>> I left I was consulting with QuickBooks on the side and I had built out, I had helped build out their content marketing function within their resource center at the time. It was really kind of repository for the long tail SEO phrases.

06:15>> You know the type, right? Where it's just every long tail phrase, every permutation of a keyword. And what I came in there and did was really helped them build out a branded asset.

06:27>> And it became a destination that people wanted to go to, wanted to return to. Return visitors is always my true north metric.

06:35>> And the person that I had installed at the time, Jimmy Daly, was actually the person who I had brought in to run it. He had decided that he wanted to go to Animalz and go more agency side at the time. So I was in Berlin shooting some videos for Oberlo and the idea of, Hey, they needed somebody to take this thing over. I had helped build it in the beginning. And it just kind of clicked for

Scaling to 40 Plus Contributors Across 16 Markets

Tommy Walker

07:04>> me at that time where I was like, well, why don't I go over there and run it? So we scaled that from five to 10 freelance contributors to 40 plus contributors across SEO, social, email, like most of your customer facing channels across 16 markets. And then Intuit had a massive layoff where they laid off 7% of their entire portfolio. I was one of that lucky seven fifteen, Cried for about thirty minutes and then started my own

07:36>> business shortly thereafter.

Nathan Latka

07:37Okay. So what are you doing now?

Tommy Walker

07:40>> Now I am consulting with other Fortune 1,000 companies, building out content marketing functions. That includes everything from content operations and how content gets created and distributed throughout the company to the distribution strategy out into the world,

07:59>> budgeting basically the entire function, building that out or improving it in certain situations as well.

How to Hire Great Freelance Writers

Nathan Latka

08:06What are your top three ways to find someone listening right now and they wanna launch a blog and hire a writer to do this? Do you recommend some of these marketplaces, you know, like, Verblio, Scripted, WriterAccess, Contentfly, or are there other sources that you use?

Tommy Walker

08:18>> Yeah. I've actually always, always, always had good luck with ProBlogger. The problogger.com community. I've hired New York Times published authors, someone who's written several For Dummies books and the award winners. It's amazing what goes out there. So my recommendation to anybody who is ever going to hire is to actually do something called writing a content code first, which is basically the rules of engagement defining the soul of your publication.

08:50>> For me, one of my rules is rule number four is opinions are bullshit, do the research. Don't talk down to your reader. Setting these rules that define the publication, like how you're going to engage with the market. Then from there writing your advertisements for that and trying to get people on board, Not just like, hey, we need somebody to write stuff for us, but here's the mission that we're on and the narrative that we're trying to

09:17>> build out throughout the market. For me, that's always been, I have to believe that's the reason why I've been able to attract the talent that I've been able to attract

09:27>> because it's really more mission driven than transactional.

Nathan Latka

09:32And so how many of these customers are you working with today?

The Content Studio Today and GoDaddy Client

Tommy Walker

09:35>> I have two major clients at the moment and then I do a lot of ad hoc stuff. One of my major clients right now is GoDaddy. So I'm like doing alright.

Nathan Latka

09:44We just bought, founderled.com from GoDaddy. Thank goodness they got it because I already ordered a bunch of t shirts, and I wasn't gonna have the t shirts reprinted. I So just got notification this morning that we have the community. This is a community we're launching to celebrate Bootstrap SaaS Founders. We're basically gonna do essentially like TechCrunch, but just celebrating people that own a 100% that broke 5,000,000 revenue and give the dividends to their team. So so

10:07big fan of GoDaddy there. Tell me about what can SaaS founders expect if they're listening right now and they want to come work with you? What should their minimum revenue be? What stage should they be at?

Ideal Client Profile for SaaS Founders

Tommy Walker

10:17>> Yeah. So I do two sides of the equation. I like to work with high growth startups. So most of the time that's anywhere between, I prefer to have a million MRR is kind of in that really sweet spot there.

10:35>> Then I work with the enterprise level clients, which money's not really an object at that point. And

10:43>> when we work together, one of the first things that I really try to do is establish that content code, really define that voice. That's one of the things that I think a lot of blogs and content marketing strategies as a whole lack that sort of differentiation.

11:01>> We all kind of default to that, you know, the keyword base, like let's write for robots. And the question that I'm actually asking myself now is what if Google didn't exist and how do we create content that would carry itself without a search engine being the thing to pick it up? So which is on an SEO podcast. You know.

Perspective and the Content Code Philosophy

Nathan Latka

11:21I mean, my biggest issue has working with writers is they are too factual. And unfortunately, in today's world, people don't give a shit about facts. What they care about are polarized opinions. And so it's really hard for me to push my writers and say, insert your freaking opinion in this. Like push your goal is to push the audience either love you or hate you in the first three sentences. And then they'll read the rest. It doesn't

11:41matter if they love you or hate you, but they'll then they'll read the rest.

Tommy Walker

11:43>> Right. And perspective is the thing that's missing the most right now. The question And the reason I believe perspective is missing from your authors and just authors in general is because it comes back to that content code. If you're not defining what that soul of your publication is, there's no anchoring into what that perspective is going to be. Businesses need a point of view more now than ever. And if you are not setting the guidelines on

12:12>> that, the rest of it just becomes, you know, it's the blogger borg voice. Right? It's the same blog over and over again depending on you know? And and that's obnoxious and terrible to read and nobody likes it.

What The Content Studio Does Best

Nathan Latka

12:26So So so what are you best in the world at? Like, hiring and managing a team of freelance writers or going out and finding and really, like, product SEO?

Tommy Walker

12:34>> I would say it's probably the first is really really setting those guidelines, that tone, building out the operation itself and and connecting people within the company. So it's not just content marketers kind of siloed off on the other side of the business and and and they're all on a little island. It's more about having an integrated team that you have the right people on board and everybody's really representing what that company is. Blogs are and content

13:03>> marketing as a whole, blogs in particular are the most frequently published voice of the company. And that's something that needs to be taken very seriously. That's one of the things that I try to stress both on the senior leadership level, but also with the people that I work with on the ground level.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:21All right, Tommy, let's wrap up with the famous five here. We're out of time. Number one, favorite book.

Tommy Walker

13:26>> Story by Robert McKee.

Nathan Latka

13:27Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Tommy Walker

13:30>> Not currently.

Nathan Latka

13:31Number three, what's your favorite online tool for doing long tail SEO keyword research?

Tommy Walker

13:36>> Oh, I've actually been getting into Jarvis lately.

13:41>> Jarvis.

Nathan Latka

13:42Number four, how many hours of sleep do you eat every night?

Tommy Walker

13:44>> Not enough. Anywhere between two to six, if I'm lucky.

Nathan Latka

13:49Alright. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Tommy Walker

13:52>> Married with kids.

Nathan Latka

13:53How many kids?

Tommy Walker

13:54>> Three.

Nathan Latka

13:55Oh, busy guy. How old are you?

Tommy Walker

13:57>> I am 36. Soon.

Closing Thoughts and Lessons Learned

Nathan Latka

14:00Okay. Happy early birthday. Last last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Tommy Walker

14:06>> Not to be arrogant when it comes to this. I don't know everything and there's always a better learning experience and there's always going to be somebody smarter and better at what you do.

Nathan Latka

14:16Guys, there you have it. First writer at Shopify Plus launched the marketing strategy there, grew to about 100,000 weekly active readers and about 1,500 customers there on the platform before he left and joined QuickBooks after that, did the same playbook there. Said, know what? I like working with founders and companies directly. Working with high growth SaaS companies, helping them scale their content marketing, specifically hiring and maintaining a content code for the freelance writing team they're putting

14:38together as they look to scale and drive new enterprise accounts. Tommy, thanks for taking us to the top.

Tommy Walker

14:44>> Yeah, no problem.

Nathan Latka

14:47One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

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