The Content Marketing Institute partnered with Jay Acunzo and his brilliant Unthinkable podcast as we lead up to Content Marketing World 2017. Jay interviews seven of our favorite CMWorld speakers to not only discuss some topics important to marketers, but to also dig a little deeper to learn what makes these people who they are today, how they spend their free time, and what influences them. We hope you enjoy this series with Jay Baer, Jessica Best, Mitch Joel, Doug Kessler, Robert Rose, Tamsen Webster and Amy Schmittauer. Each slide links right to their podcast episode.

1. Content Marketers You Know,
Sharing Stories You Don’t

2. Jay Baer is a competition barbecue
judge. Mitch Joel trained with one of
the deadliest humans on the planet.
Tamsen Webster has the most meta
fascination of any marketing speaker.

3. As for me? Well, Unthinkable subscribers learn more about my quirks than they bargained for each week.
The content marketing industry is chock full of generalized advice, but in that noise, something is getting
lost: the power of the individual.
In this line of work, our personalities matter. Our past experiences, our hopes, our beliefs, fears, biases — you
name it — it all makes us unique. And in a noisy world, to differentiate, we can wield that stuff like a weapon.
Unthinkable partnered with Content Marketing World for the past few months to bring you
an every-other-week series featuring leaders you know sharing personal stories you don’t.
As the creator and host of the show, I have one mission: To help content marketers
create exceptional content by finding and following what makes them an
exception. CMWorld shares my fascination with and belief in the power of the
individual. They see eye-to-eye with our community that the path to creating
better, more differentiated work isn’t some “secret” or “hack” or even innovative
new technology. It’s the people — the very same people that I love seeing every
year at CMWorld. (Maybe that’s you?)
See you in Cleveland this September!
Jay

4. “It has to feel natural, and practice can make it feel
natural, but there’s a boundary even with practice, what
will feel natural to you. And I find that some people both
in speaking and in writing will try to push it beyond what
their natural boundaries of comfort are, and the results are
typically not what they’re looking for.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n Jay’s favorite, if unusual, quote
n Getting certified as a BBQ judge
(and the surprising cheating that goes on)
n Jay’s least favorite advice for speakers
JAY BAER
ON BOUNDARIES
LISTEN NOW

5. “I feel like for email marketing, changing a tool does not
make your output any better. What I’ve seen people actually
shoot themselves in the foot about is saying “I’m going to
change to a new email platform because I can’t get what I
need out of my old platform.” And what they don’t realize is
that you gotta take that dirty data and those bad processes
from your old platform. All that moves over. Your talent is the
same, your database is the same.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n How Jess learned to love email
n Why she flies the Nerd Flag proudly
JESSICA BEST
ON BEING THE WIZARD
LISTEN NOW

6. “If you always have at least a big toe, a foot, a leg in the future,
there’s always something new coming. So knowing that, and
thinking about that, all I’m really saying is everything you’re doing
in the present is fine – it can probably be optimized, it could
probably be streamlined, as there are more areas where you can
be efficient – but there’s also all this stuff coming.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n The gut-wrenching moments before Mitch’s
first-ever speech
n Mitch’s writing habits (and how he wound up writing
on the floor of an airport)
n How training with one of the world’s deadliest
humans changed him
MITCH JOEL
ON THE FUTURE
LISTEN NOW

7. “I’m a huge believer in voice as a force multiplier in marketing,
and I’m shocked how few companies want to go for that because
it’s right there. It’s got to be one of the easiest force multipliers
there is. Not because it’s easy, but all you have to do is want to do
that, and all of a sudden your business can change and be that
one in your market that has a voice.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n Inside Doug’s days producing a TV documentary
with his brother
n Why Doug thinks more brands should go negative
n How Doug learned to embrace his sappy emotional side
in speeches
DOUG KESSLER
ON VOICE
LISTEN NOW

8. ROBERT ROSE
ON AUTHORITY
“The reason I prefer the word authority rather than expert is because
first of all, everybody is an expert these days. But the authority, back
to the origins of the word, literally the derivation of the word author,
means ‘the sole creator of.’ And when you’re the creator of it, you are the
authority of it, and then by that very nature, you are exceptional.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n Behind-the-scenes interviewing John Cleese
n How music affected Robert’s life and work
n Robert’s biggest frustration with marketing thinking today
LISTEN NOW

9. “I firmly believe that in the future we’ll need to be able to
understand who we are and what we do ties into how everybody
else does what they do. It’s about how our red thread weaves together
with everybody else’s to create that stronger fabric. I think we need to
know how to do that and it will be critically important.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n What frustrates Tamsen most about public speakers, and
how she solves it for others.
n Tamsen’s “Red Thread” idea, and how she sees it everywhere
TAMSEN
WEBSTER
ON CONNECTION
LISTEN NOW

10. AMY
SCHMITTAUER
ON INFLUENCE
“Everybody knows what they’re doing, but also has no idea what they’re
doing. That’s helped me over my career in the last couple of years. It’s
an enormous amount of respect knowing that whatever they figured
out took some time and some error in that thought process. There’s
probably something they’re not doing right. There’s no one that’s really
higher than anyone else. If we all just helped each other out, we would
connect more, instead of trying to position somebody higher or lower.”
STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
n Amy starred in a Wizard of Oz parody as Dorothy
n The one interview question she wishes others would stop asking
n Amy’s take on “behind-the-scenes” vs. “the scenes”
LISTEN NOW

11. Hear more stories from Jessica, Jay, Mitch, Robert,
Tamsen, Doug and Amy and hundreds of other speakers when
the largest content marketing event on the planet returns!
September 5-8, 2017
Cleveland Convention Center
www.contentmarketingworld.com
Use code UNTHINKABLE to save $100
on current rates!
Subscribe to Jay’s Unthinkable podcast - http://unthinkable.fm