How To Kickstart A Career In Content Creation | Ollie Judge

Claudia:

Welcome to the Waddyado podcast, where I sit down and speak with professionals, having honest conversations about their careers, how they got into them, and advice for those looking to follow a similar path. But most of all, telling you, the listeners, what it's really like to do that job. In this episode, we sit down with Ollie Judge, a content and marketing expert who has worked at companies like Sayon, 11FS, and even launched his own business, Adrift Entertainment, off the back of huge success building FinTech Insider, a hugely successful podcast. Now at Climate as Head of Marketing, Oli discusses the highs and also the challenges of working in content, what you can expect to earn in a career in content and actionable steps to get into the field. I hope you enjoy. Well, Ollie, welcome to the Waddyado podcast. It's an absolute delight to have you here.

Ollie: It's lovely to be here.

Claudia: Fabulous. Well, Ollie, we're going to get a little bit into your wonderful career across being obviously within content, being head of media, head of marketing and communications and all the lovely, exciting bits in between. So without further ado, would you like to just give the listeners a little bit of an insight into what you do for a living and how you would describe it to someone who potentially isn't in your industry or field?

Ollie: So my official title tends to be Head of Marketing or something around that, but really what I do is I help people with interesting products create content around those products and then I help them then find the ideal audience to really add value to what that product is doing but also to find the things that maybe you wouldn't be able to uncover through other traditional marketing means like paid social or seo or any of that other stuff i find that what content does is it opens up a dialogue uh between both the audience and the people running the product um and that's what i do for a living really

Claudia: Definitely. Awesome. And I think content is such a really important piece in the marketing mix these days, especially because even for example, from an employer branding perspective, you will have a little nose around on people's websites, all the socials to really get into and under the skin of a particular brand or business and all that content obviously lands in your hands in order to deliver that and really sort of enhance the brand and hopefully conversions ultimately. That's the winning at the end of the day. So awesome. So what were the first things that kind of influenced you into the world of marketing content, et cetera?

Ollie: So my background isn't actually to do with tech or marketing or anything like that. I actually worked in entertainment when I started my career. I made a load of very weird YouTube videos when I got going. You can search wrestling isn't wrestling or the death and return of superman on YouTube and you'll see a couple of things pop up. I lived in America for a while and then through a series of weird events ended up back in London. And I didn't really know how to apply my, let's say, entertainment skills to some of the things in London. When I got back to London, there wasn't really a lot going on in the film world or the TV world. And my expertise was YouTube, which was quite early on. We didn't have all the YouTubers that we do today. It was kind of like one or two. So it's kind of hard to place yourself in an industry. And then I ended up meeting the guys over at 11FS when they were eight people and they had just started a show called FinTech Insider which at the time was not even recorded over Zoom, it was recorded over something that recorded phone lines. It was a very sort of janky setup and I came on and I essentially treated what was a marketing gig at a fintech company as a production studio and production house and just figured out essentially how to run a podcast studio there and me and one other audio guy and from there I kind of learned the ropes both with starting podcasts applying entertainment principles in a world in fintech that had never really had them before. But I also learned the ropes of marketing very well as well because the whole point of the media side of 11FS was to fuel the consultancy side. So they didn't have a traditional marketing setup and the only inbound that they ever had was from the podcast and essentially the podcast was free. In fact it made money because it was sponsored. which was very unique at the time and where a lot of content setups or marketing setups are seen as cost centers. We were at some points making more money than the consultancy side. Then from there it was, okay, how do we push this? How do we scale FinTech Insider up to being one of the most listened to business podcasts in the world, but also expanded out into other verticals, all that kind of stuff. From there, I left 11FS, started my own company doing that for other companies that weren't 11FS. And for me, that was the opportunity to work with lots of different people to see whether this sort of, let's call it an entertainment approach, works for a bunch of different verticals, different people, all that kind of stuff. And I think the best way to explain it is a lot of tech products can seem kind of dry on the surface, but there's usually a big story to the industry behind it. and the more you dig into that industry and the more you tell those stories it's number one easier to link in why the product is of value to those people but also to kind of make people feel like the cool kids which has kind of been a theme throughout my career which is how do you make something that doesn't isn't all that interesting I don't know like fintech or fraud or carbon labeling, how do you make that an interesting thing and make it something that people want to be associated with and feel like they're part of a club? And we do that through telling stories really.

Claudia: I love that. I think there's a lot more of a move towards integrating storytelling into so many different types of content and marketing comms, et cetera, in order to, as you said, to deliver that value and make it more comprehensible to the audience. So fabulous. So how did you, I guess, Well how well did you do with regards to 11FS and some of those podcasts because obviously sponsoring them is fantastic but you know how many downloads were you getting or listeners were you getting per episode within that time? What was sort of the peak?

Ollie: So with it there was Good question. When I started, we probably sat at around 800 downloads an episode, and that was when I first got there. And then by the time I left, we were hovering around 60,000 to 70,000 downloads an episode. And that would vary a lot. So for those who aren't familiar with FinTech Insider, and it has also changed a lot since I've left, so please don't take this as gospel right now, but there were three formats for the show. There was the news show, which came out on Monday, which was the rundown of the 10 most interesting stories that week. There was an insights show, which is standard roundtable talk about a thing that happened, and then an interview show. Now, the news show always did better than every other episode, and that's because that was our audience driver. So the news show we would try and get journalists on, we tried to get the most important people possible on. We would then also put a couple of pints in front of them so that they would relax a bit, always record at five o'clock on a Thursday. It's a great thing. People let loose a lot of it more. We even did an episode that was a pub crawl, so that was quite an interesting one.

Claudia: Logistically, how did you even do that?

Ollie: Record about 15 minutes in each pub and then pick a day and places where there aren't going to be a lot of people. It was interesting. episode. So the whole point was that the news show would sort of pull in audiences because we could get journalists, people that would talk more on their social profiles, all that kind of stuff. The insight show was the, let's call it, the real value-add. That's where we could put the consultants on to talk about really difficult problems and show our work and how that worked. and then their interview show, and I'm sure some people at 11FS would shoot me for saying this, the interview show was to basically make very important people feel like they're part of the club, even though that was the least listened to episode. So we would have like bank CEOs or people that just raised a lot of money or something on the show using the interview segment to kind of go like, hey, look, you're important, you're part of this movement. But realistically, not many people were listening to it. It was a bit of a balance, and I think a lot of FinTech Insider's success was it went out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and that was an intense schedule and required a lot of discipline um the amount of times where um you're having to say to a company founder no you can't go to the gym you've got to record this episode that um we've now lined up for you um and them kind of sticking their finger up at you but still sitting down in that chair and doing it and also editing over weekends and things like that um it's a hard slog it's not easy and like i said it was run like an entertainment company not like a marketing um department

Claudia: Yeah, that's a wonderful insight and I think it's just an absolute, I guess, wonderful showcase of how businesses were doing, well, you guys are doing it differently at 11FS and how slowly people have seen it, jumped on board it and it has become a little bit more commonplace to have large podcasts associated with brands and businesses. It's definitely quite a big channel these days, isn't it? Awesome. Let's dive into a little bit more, I guess, around your ability to actually do your job. So, for example, in order to have all these wonderful skills, were there any courses that you went on in order to be able to do this?

Ollie: No, I'm one of these people that I learn by doing and I would say my courses here have been failing doing those things and then trying again and then trying again and then trying again. I think the biggest hurdle that people face when they enter into a content thing is that they don't understand how important consistency is and like sticking to a schedule, making sure stuff goes out. And the reason that you fail is because you didn't trust yourself and you didn't push hard enough to figure out what you actually needed to do. And I think some of the YouTubers that I've worked with in the past, one of my favorite things that they say is, my uh the first good video that i made was my 101st um i they had made 100 videos before they were actually okay with what they put out um and i completely agree um like you don't make good things until you've done it enough times that you can identify all the mistakes and the things to watch out for and i would say the teams that i've worked with and all that kind of stuff it's experience is having gone through the bad thing, figuring out how to undo the bad thing and then move on. Making hundreds of episodes of podcasts you get very good at figuring out how to deal with bad audio, how to deal with someone who doesn't understand how to plug a microphone into a computer, all the way up to you're running a live show and then suddenly there's feedback in all of the microphones and you can't get rid of it and there's 400 people in front of you, what do you do? All that kind of stuff you learn on the go and then you put it in practice. But I would say all of the tools that you need to build something in content are all available to you. They're all free. There's enough stuff on YouTube for you to learn or Reddit or whatever, but all of this stuff It's not gatekeeps. You don't have to go to university to learn it. You've just got to make something. And yeah, that's a big scary thing to do, but it's the most important thing to do.

Claudia: Awesome. Okay, so very much learning on the job. I actually had a stat yesterday, which is that only 11% of podcasts make it to 50 episodes. And I think it really goes to show that if you have that consistency there, exactly like you said, you completely learn what works, what doesn't, like tiny little details that you don't even think about in order to get to where you need to be. So that's really interesting. So for anyone looking to get into the world of content, let's say, for example, they've graduated or let's say, for example, they've been made redundant and they are really interested in a bit more of a creative career. What would you suggest to them to, I guess, get into the content world? Would you suggest that they put together a portfolio or something like that?

Ollie: Yeah, I think the most important thing is that you are interested in what you're trying to create something about. The biggest sort of hurdle that people will hit is that they've run out of things to say or they haven't thought it through enough, that they can't keep it up for a long enough time. Now, what does this have to do with getting into content? You've When making content, I think you'd have to pick your niche in a way that you feel that, even if you're not the biggest expert in it, you still feel like you could talk about it for 10 hours straight. Because of that, it makes it very easy to figure out what you're supposed to do and where your audience is and where to pick. In order for companies to pay attention to you, so if you're a fledgling sort of content producer and you want to see whether you can work with a company, they're going to look for numbers. But numbers, again, like we've just spoke about, come from consistency. The reason that numbers grow is because your audience has got used to coming back at a specific point of the week or that they keep coming back for a specific kind of content. So what you've got to do is find your edge and that thing that you can keep producing for people, what's that tiny little bit of value that people keep wanting to hit and it feels useful to them. At this point you shouldn't even be thinking about is this a podcast, is this a TikTok thing, is this a YouTube short, is this long form YouTube, this is just what is your thing and it doesn't even have to be related to the thing that you are applying to. just the action of showing that you can build an audience and you can get them to do things is probably the most important skill that you can show when going into a content thing, because the first thing that's going to come up in an interview is like, and how many views did that get? And what was the ROI on that? And the best thing is if you can go, well actually I had 100,000 people watch this thing, people go, oh wow, okay, right, well our corporate video gets 100 views. So, and that completely changes the conversation and then puts you in power. I think the biggest mistake that people make is that they go down the what I like to call the creative fairy route, that they get too into I'm going to make the prettiest thing or the most sort of like abstract thing, like you've got to talk to your audience, like content is an audience thing, you're not making an indie film here, you're like trying to resonate with someone, so it is what do you want to see in the world and then and then how do you like actually deliver something to your audience that they want to engage with and things that can be something as easy as making someone laugh like that that is value it gives them an escape for three seconds so that that's a valid thing to do um but you need to know what your aim is it is it's that horrible kind of like madman thing of like what emotion do you want someone to feel but that's a good guiding light um to to like help you develop what you want to do so it's what can you talk a lot about how do you want someone to feel about something and then what value can you deliver through your mechanism and then

Claudia: Great tips awesome so my question is next around say for example you're a you've been building some content on YouTube say you've got to that 100 video mark and you're thinking right I really want to do something with this or monetize it in some capacity, what are the trigger points and what are, you know, from a commercial perspective, what are brands looking for as views or as those, I guess, KPIs in order to think that actually you're worth someone who's worth working for or with?

Ollie: Sure. So you've probably heard the term vanity metrics, and that's something that comes up a lot in this world. So there are different forms of monetization and it really varies per ecosystem. So podcasting is very different from YouTube. YouTube is very different from TikTok. But the general things are ads which are paid per thousand views. That model probably pays the least, although it can pay quite a lot if you have an interesting niche on say like YouTube or something. So if you're doing something no one else can really do, for example, Tech reviewing is a good niche on YouTube, it pays quite a lot. Education is a good niche as well, so if you're teaching maths on a YouTube channel, those have really high CPMs because there's not a lot of channels out there and the people that are trying to engage with that, i.e. universities for maths, really pay quite a lot for those slots. that that's how that model works um but i would say that is the most dependent on scale so um in order to really earn and to to you know get to those mr beast levels you've really got to like like do things that will stand out and are quite stunty um to to push up now talking about fantasy metrics people aren't looking at views they're looking at subscribers subscribers for youtube it is recurring listeners for podcasts and um follows on the rest of the things but That's a mark of like, okay, I believe in this thing that I'm going to follow you and I like this content. And that's a good sort of like social indicator to the people that could potentially sponsor you, which leads me on to sponsorships. Again, completely varies. You're going to see the big top line ones like Squarespace that I'm sure if anyone listening to this has crossed the 10,000 subscriber mark on YouTube, you almost automatically get an email from one of the Squarespace reach out guys that will go, we will give you some money if you do this, and those will pay a reasonable amount. So even if you got to, let's say, 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, you might be looking at $1,000 for a sponsorship slot on your video, but that would be a readout ad.

Claudia: And is that £100,000 per ad or is that £1,000 per month? What does that look like?

Ollie: that's per video, so every time you mention them you're getting paid.

Claudia: That's not bad for 10,000 subscribers!

Ollie: No, but it also depends on your niche and all that kind of stuff. So for example, if I review indie films I might have a service like Mubi come along and they will pay a lot more than Squarespace because you fit their niche and they're trying to sell to you. Or if you work in financial services and you've got some kind of like FinTech show or something like that, you're probably going to have people that have quite deep pockets that want to sell SaaS products to FinTech companies. And if you've got a big audience of FinTech product managers and all that kind of stuff, then you have a very valuable audience. So you might find that you only have a thousand subscribers, but someone is willing to pay you 20,000 pounds to put it in front of those people because their conversion rate on that could be massive. And then the final one. is owning your audience and that's converting people out of the social network, so away from LinkedIn, away from YouTube, away from the podcast networks and into something like a newsletter or something that you can, like, you own the list, you can do whatever. There are a lot of ways to monetize lists but that's where people really move into things like selling courses or um uh sort of like i've seen some newsletters do private events that are sort of like five grand to enter or something like that um so really exclusive stuff that you can control with your list but it's the most lucrative because people are coming to you personally you own the list you have all of the data that can help you make a decision whereas on some of the other networks you wouldn't really be able to do that so i would say ramp in when you're ramping in it's just going to be the standard i'm going to pay for a view or whatever um like that cpm model then you get up to real sponsors and then um and then from there it's like okay how do you convert that into something that you own um and if you're looking at that from more of a traditional standpoint and if want your mind to be blown, or not really, but basically if a YouTuber is having a dry month in terms of ad revenue because say it's January and everyone's ramped down their ad spend, you'll probably see YouTubers selling a bunch of their merch because that's how they make up the shortfall in lack of ad revenue. So if you see your favorite YouTuber or you're listening to your favorite podcast and they're like, we've got a super soft t-shirt that we're selling you and da da da da da, that means that they didn't get an ad booked by

Claudia: Okay, that's very insightful to know. That's something I did not know, so fabulous. Okay, so for those who don't know, could you describe like what a typical day in the life for someone in your profession would be? So for example, a content producer or a content manager within like a B2B tech firm or something like that?

Ollie: Sure, so the most important thing. is that you're plugged in and I know this goes against every sort of like well-being thing that someone says but I do wake up and I basically look at Reddit and that's to like get connected with whatever's going on at any given point in time. It's very important to know what the context of the conversation that you're having is and that starts before work. That's just my general state of being. It's like what news happened, who's talking about, what questions are being asked more than others and keep that in my head, and then that's going to frame the context for whatever I do at work. Then, rather cliche, I have a very elaborate coffee routine involving three different machines. Wow, three. And then, yeah, I mean, like, roaster, grinder, and then a proper, like, extraction machine is the whole thing. I would say most content teams, like a stand-up meeting would basically kill them and is very toxic for a content team, so you should stay away from them, but maybe at the beginning of each week you would do what I've previously called an editorial call. So these are much like what you would see at a newspaper and what you're looking at is essentially what's happening now, what's near, and what's far. So now is, okay, what are we publishing this week? Is it all on track? Have we got everything that we need? Does anyone need any support? then set out the scheduling dates. Near is probably what's happening in the next couple of weeks. Have we got a difficult guest that we're booking? Has a location fallen through? All of that kind of stuff. And then far is, okay, well, we want to do this big piece of content or we want to start a new series or something like that. And then you fold that into your week to make sure that you're rolling properly. With your sort of content and editorial teams. You don't tend to rake through metrics too much. Like you might do it once every month. Obviously that will be on a different cadence with maybe business stakeholders. So whoever your head of content is, is probably talking to your CMO or even your CEO about, hey, here are the numbers for this week or day or whatever. But that's not something that you want to put the pressure on the content team. As a head of content, it's your responsibility to make sure the number goes up, not your graphic designer.

Claudia: And what would those numbers be? What are those key KPIs within the content world that CEOs are looking for?

Ollie: Yeah, so it really depends on who it is, but I would say some, mainly within the SaaS world, it would be how many MQLs have you driven using content and that's a weekly thing.

Claudia: And for anyone who doesn't know what MQLs is, that's Marketing Qualified Leads.

Ollie: Yes. I would advise, if you were a head of content, you would try and get away from the MQL and get closer to MQR, which is Marketing Qualified Revenue, because it is a much more accurate view of what your content is generating. Like I said, if you have one of those audiences that one person can convert into a massive thing, you don't just want to be labeled as, Hey, you drove one thing this month when it could be a million dollar deal. So make sure that you've got the right stats with the right people. And then for more, I would say for companies that are more in tune with content and you maybe have a bit more backing of your senior leadership team, they'll probably look at subscribers. So subscribers over the last 30 days, because they know that scale is what you're really looking to drive. And then you should be asking questions about how do we drive that number? Where's the biggest sort of like driver of bringing people towards us? Can we invest in that a bit more? Is there something else that we could do? All that kind of thing. So I'd say those are the two biggest ones. And then you might look at sort of like ecosystem metrics. So did someone find a podcast on LinkedIn? Then go subscribe to that and then buy something off us or things like that. So essentially pipeline things, but it's not quite the same as a sales pipe. because people might go into a holding state when they're just consuming content but they're not ready to buy or anything like that, but it's still important to keep them engaged. and then you might be looking at something over sort of like a six to nine to twelve month timeline to make sure that you're getting people in but in order to do that you need a lot of data and you need to know how to navigate that data which will usually come at a sort of like 1000 to 2000 subscriber mark because then you can get a real read on what's going on. Yeah, you'd have editorial meeting, then probably feedback to people that are giving you money to make this stuff. That's a good one to do. And then your days probably get split up into a bunch of things. If you're ahead of, you're probably looking at a lot of meetings and the meetings are usually very short and it can be anything from engaging with a sponsor to tell them that their copy sucks and that they need to rewrite it, and no, we're not going to pop like a weird cowbell sound at the end of their bit of whatever segment we're building for them. If you don't have sponsors, then you're probably engaging with the other teams within the organization, so sales, product, all that kind of stuff to make sure that you're reflecting whatever they're building in what you're doing. And then afternoons tend to be make the thing, whether that's shooting something, recording something, anything, you're usually running around. I'm not afraid to say that even though I'm, like, I think over 10 years into this at this point, you will still quite frequently catch me running around with, like, microphone stands and cameras and all that kind of stuff. I think it's important to be very close to this stuff and to make sure that you're talking to the people that you're making the content with. I think people can get stuck up in their ivory towels a little bit, but at that point you lose connection with what your audience wants. So I think it's worth being on the ground and being there. So I would tend to divide it up into admin in the mornings, and that's essentially keeping the wheels on the track, making sure that you are doing what you're saying that you're supposed to be doing, and then afternoons are like get dirty, do the thing and learn. You still learn new things every day when you're doing this stuff and you get to work with some cool people, whether it's the videographer that you hired to do this thing who actually worked on a bunch of ads that you're like, wow okay that's pretty cool, or the sound guy who was working on Dune or something like that. You'd be surprised how much you just run into other people, you learn something and then you can reproduce that thing going forward. and take some risks. When I was at Xeon we actually ended up shooting on the same stage as Jun for a couple of our YouTube videos, which was interesting and isn't something that I would have even considered Even if I light up like and it was just through talking to people and learning new things and we were like, okay We're gonna give this a go and I actually kept the cost of production down really.

Claudia: Okay So you've obviously talked and named up there a little bit which is great, but what are the best bits of your job?

Ollie: Best bits of my job, I think The best bit of my job is always if we send something out and it does really, really well. There is no greater rush than being like, okay, that worked. I think the other thing has been when people approach me at conferences or whatever and go like, hey, I know it was you and your team behind that thing. That was really cool. And then hearing stories about how people keep coming back to a specific episode or a video or something because it either gives them motivation or it taught them something or just that sort of like, let's call it the unlock in their career. That's always been a big one for me.

Claudia: Amazing. And what would you say are the most difficult or challenging parts of your job?

Ollie: Number one is consistency, number two is because everyone consumes a lot of content they believe that they know how to do it and people will get bright bright ideas about how they're going to make things and it's very difficult to navigate those conversations and as many things as you may have to point out that you've done it before people will still not listen to you and think that they know best and I would say that's kind of the most difficult part of navigating particularly sort of like tech companies and things like that. I think the other part is what I would call the legacy side of how content and marketing was done in the past. If you have senior leaders that maybe used traditional advertising agencies or like, I don't know, had the Don Draper creative I'm a creative director or something like that in there. It's going to make your life very difficult. And you need to make sure that you have enough in your corner that you can go, I know how to do this. You need to trust me.

Claudia: So how would you say that AI is going to affect the world of content? Because ultimately, there's been so many, obviously, things like chat GBT. There's lots of things that are pumping out. can I just say awful content or they try and like clip content and it is just awful. So how do you think it will affect your profession?

Ollie: I mean it already is and I think Okay, I think all the big AI companies will say that you could replace any creative person with some kind of AI model that can generate images or videos or scripts or whatever. And truth is, like you said, all of that stuff is very by the numbers, it's not creative. And by the nature of AI, it is the distinct average of all of the data set that they have. Therefore, it's not going to be, it might not be bad, but it's not going to be good either. Like you're going to be stuck in the middle. I think AI can be a great accelerant. Um, I mean, you can, you can do some interesting stuff like Photoshop has some nice new AI tools, um, to get things done very quickly. If you look at the company, like Descript, who help you edit podcasts, they do some magical things with removing arms at ours, silences, retuning audio, all that kind of stuff. Like fantastic. And, and that makes, uh, my life and all of the creative people that I work with much easier. Um, and. Yeah, so I think that's the good side of AI. The devil in it is when people are like, why can't we just write a prompt and get a YouTube video out of it? And yeah, you could do that, but I think what you're going to see over the next few months and years is, like I said, there's going to be a lot of noise, but it's going to be the people that stand out that can use those tools just to accelerate or create interesting things. It's not going to be just using the tool on its own. and I see more interesting things with AI around in say like video games or interactive things where potentially you could have a character that you could talk to that is trained off something. But I think the biggest, most difficult thing that we're going to see in content is around IP and copyright. around what were these models trained on, where are they getting stuff. We've had instances of Adobe being taken to court because an image was definitely used when they shouldn't have, or ChatGPT being taken to court with New York Times. I think you should be very wary of if these things go south and all of your content was based on some of these models that was maybe stealing things from other people, then maybe keep that in mind and make sure that you are reviewing a lot of your scripts and all that kind of stuff to make sure that it doesn't Sound like AI has just hallucinated something.

Claudia: Okay, great. Thank you so much for that, Ollie. So let's go on to salaries within the profession. So could you talk us through what the salaries are like going up the ladder in content? So for example, starting out as maybe a junior content producer and or executive all the way up to maybe a head of content and that kind of thing.

Ollie: so um junior uh i hate to say it but you're gonna be on nothing and it is very close to minimum wage when you start out whether that's kind of like as a copywriter or a social media manager or whatever Um, it's going to be down to how much faith the company has in the specific thing that you're doing. Um, a lot of companies know that they need this kind of person, but they don't really want to invest in it because they can't see the ROI straight away. Um, I would say you're probably going to need a couple of jobs under your belt. So, um, jump in, move quickly so that you can get a couple of roles under your belt and then move up to manager, which in this world doesn't actually mean that you manage people, it usually means that you're just one rung up from an executive. I hate to say it, but the entry level position in social media is social media manager, which is a bit of a misnomer and can cause problems later, but you're probably looking for your first job, between 20 and 30, depending on the company. But don't expect to be paid a lot. And it's going to be what you do from there. From there, you either go down two different lines. You go into what I would say is production or the business side of things. So how do you monetize? How do you prove ROI? How do you link in with? So let's call it the business ops side of content, which is kind of what I ended up doing and tends to be my prime focus. And with that, that's where you do need to become more of a project manager. You need to, you need to understand the nature of the companies that you're working with and what is valuable for them and what numbers are. And that that's getting in with startup metrics and understanding what annual recurring revenue is and all that kind of stuff and knowing how to push that through content. The other side is that you stay on the creative side and, um, that's where you're going to really hone your copywriting skills or you're going to be a great director or something like that. Those paths very rarely converge again, even though both sides may err into the other side, you tend to stick to your link. and that's where you're going to have the differences between head of content and head of creative. Creative tends to be more the creative fairy and then the head of content tends to be a little bit, I mean I've quite a lot of the time I've been told that I look very grumpy on calls and it's mainly because I'm just kind of looking at numbers the whole time and I think you'll have the creative person who is quite happy-go-lucky and all that kind of stuff and then the grump who tends to be the head of content who's not actually all that grumpy.

Claudia: It might be a sweeping generalization, it might just be you Ollie.

Ollie: I've met quite a lot of header content, but the, I would say then as far as what the path looks like on my side, you're going to move up sort of like project managery style. So you'll start off with maybe your channel and then like, if your channel is doing well, then you're going to get pushed up. You're going to manage more channels. Then from there you move into what I do, which is more of a, like a strategic thing. So you're overlooking the entire ecosystem of content. and then you'll have people that work under you who are manning those specific things. But it's critical that once you move into strategy you still understand what the driver is. Every three years there's a new thing like TikTok didn't exist a few years ago and then suddenly that popped up and that is the most important thing to do right now. So staying on top of all of that stuff and understanding how it works. As silly as you may feel being like in your mid thirties, scrolling through TikTok, being like, I'm not quite sure why I'm watching this person eat something from a bakery. I love it.

Claudia: I end up scrolling for ages by accident and I've literally got so sucked into the world of TikTok. So I'm sure lots of people can probably act like I sympathize with that.

Ollie: Yep. Exactly, so yeah but learning that stuff is you know and it's also it's just learning new channels or finding new ways of finding audiences. On the other side it's just going to be honing your craft and being creative trying new things and that's where, I don't know, going on courses or recording your own stuff outside of work is really going to build you up. I would say that the header content route is probably clearer in terms of progression, so it's usually manager, senior manager, then either some kind of, I don't know, I've seen strategic marketing manager before head of content but I think it kind of gets a bit muddy at the top but once you're out the top you tend to sit in that head of side of things and then The creative side, I'm sure, oh, I know you've had Mike Meadows on.

Claudia: So just to clarify exactly salaries at the top, what would you say? So obviously you said they start around 20 to 25 and what do they get up to at the very top for a head of content?

Ollie: Okay, in the UK, you'll probably sit around, so once you get to that head of role, you'll probably start at 85, but then you can progress all the way up to like maybe 120, 130, but then that's when you might have to start switching gears into progressing further up the marketing chain. So that's where you might start eyeing like a CMO role or something like that. That's in the UK. US, you could probably see 160 to 200 at the head of content role. Depending on where you are, there are brands that really, really value content and they will invest heavily in that. I think it's worth keeping eyes out, but obviously making that jump to the US is a tricky thing. So, but I think with enough connections and all that kind of stuff, you might be able to look at sponsorships, but that's up to you.

Claudia: Great, thank you. So what three actionable steps or resources would you recommend to those looking to get into the content world?

Ollie: Right, out of normal steps, the first one, like I said earlier, find something that you can talk about forever and be the expert in. I don't know how to stress that enough and I think it's easy to get blown off course and not stick to your guns, so I think find a thing that you're good at and then keep repeating that. That can evolve, it doesn't have to stay the way that it always does, but it's the most important thing to understand. The next part is make the things that your audiences want to see. If you're trying to make this a commercial thing, you can't just make decisions for your audience, you need to talk to them, you need to understand what they want and how they want it. So getting to know your audience is critical, and you're not going anywhere without that. Then the final thing, I would say you can find all kinds of videos, you can find all kinds of things about this, which is the consistency side of things. And sticking to it is the hardest thing in content, and you will have managers that just go, we can't do this anymore, but fight it. Go, okay, I'm actually going to Like I'm gonna try making this on my own or we're gonna zero the budget and just and just do it on like With a skeleton stuff, whatever just try and push through you'll find you'll find the end game and the Reason that you need to do that is because if you work in content You've been doing this for a long time and you've made a lot of stuff your taste is good. Now. There's a really famous like really famous like clip of I think it was an interview with Ira Glass who runs this podcast called This American Life. And it's about sort of self-criticism and understanding that essentially you have great taste and the things that you're making don't live up to your great taste. You know it's bad, but you know what's bad in it. And it's through the act of making something and keeping going that you begin to make good things. And it's that mistakes loop and all that kind of stuff. But trust yourself that your taste is good. If you are finding things that no one else is finding, if you are um suggest if you are constantly suggesting to the people around you hey this is really cool and they listen to it and they're like oh that's awesome where did you find that your taste is good you can make good things you just got to keep pushing through that hard part to to get to making good things and i know this all sounds quite sort of like in the air and tricky but the more you do this and you'll very quickly chart your own path and it is that repetition thing there is a reason why everyone in my position just says keep going because we've all seen that that uptick when no one else believed in you and then Tell you what, no one believes in you. And then, uh, and then when you get good numbers, everyone is your best friend. All of a sudden it's, it's a very, it's a very weird thing.

Claudia: Amazing. Well, Ollie, um, I think you've given some incredible insights into the world of content, how to get into it. And, um, also, you know, consistency is obviously a key theme throughout our entire chat. So I really do thank you so much for your time and I hope everybody enjoys this wonderful episode.

Ollie: Thank you for having me.

Claudia: Thank you so much for listening to the Waddyado podcast. Whether you're looking for a job or ready to find your latest inspired hire, head over to whatdoyoudo.com forward slash jobs or click the link in the description. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share with anyone you think would love this episode.