The Magic of Ignorance: Knowing What You Don’t Know

Joseph Jaffe, founder of Evol8tion and author of Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones and the forthcoming book Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss the two types of entrepreneurs, the idea behind his revolutionary startup, and how Kickstarter has helped him prove his point.
Read on for some of the highlights and tweetable moments, or listen to the full podcast.

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Tweetable Moments

“A true entrepreneur is a masochist.” -@jaffejuice (tweet this)

“We’re not saying start-ups are the next big thing; start-ups always were the big thing.” -@jaffejuice (tweet this)

Doing the “Real Work”

There are two types of entrepreneurs. One type is the Mark Zuckerberg entrepreneur, who says, “Don’t come near me; this is my vision.” Joe is not that kind of entrepreneur. He is the creator type of entrepreneur, the one who is not afraid to fail, the one who wants primarily to give back to the community and the world.
This was the paradigm that drove the start of Evol8tion. Evol8tion connects brands with early stage startups to provide technology solutions to business problems. A big part of this is education, and it’s “educate across what we call the entire innovation continuum: digital, social, mobile and emerging.”
Some of these big brands have problems – needing insight on technology and startup trends, not being able to harness new media as well as they want, etc – that start-ups are already solving. Evol8tion brings the match-making process that allows these businesses to help each other. Like the Social Pros Podcast, it’s about the real work, not the hot-air-filled talking heads.
Joe’s upcoming book (released October 14th) Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model also puts its money where its mouth is; they raised the money to print it through Kickstarter but didn’t keep any of the $50,000+ raised for themselves. After all, then the book wouldn’t be zero paid media at all.
With the inflation in media outpacing economic inflation, at some point there will have to be a collapse. The hope with the book is that maybe we can avert that collapse by slowing down the media inflation.
Otherwise, “brands are not going to be able to afford to be able to buy the minimum acceptable level of reach in traditional channels, let alone non-traditional channels, to be able to achieve their goals.”
In exciting podcast news, Evol8tion acquired BeanCast this summer, thus expanding their owned media. The BeanCast is a popular marketing podcast where Joe regularly guests, and Joe also has his own podcast about new marketing called Jaffe Juice. Check them both out for invaluable wisdom and insights.

Four Your Information

How did you get involved with social media?
“It was a natural evolution from being a digital guy,” Joe says. He started a blog and podcast in 2005 because he wanted to be out front, embracing new technology. He also wanted to be able to talk intelligently about those platforms in Life After the 30-Second Spot: Energize Your Brand with a Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising.
What do you like best about social media?
Joe believes in the power of response and responsiveness. Being able to reach out to an author or famous person, to engage with them in real time, is something completely unprecedented and very exciting.
What do you like least about social media?
Everyone is always in search of the Next Big Thing, so some of the best parts of social media – like direct to consumer blogs – get forgotten. Joe calls it “Next Big Thing Syndrome.”
If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be?
“There no one,” Joe says, “that I really want to talk to besides the people, quite frankly, that I’m talking to right now.” By being in the moment and being open to it, “you can just have these incredible conversations” with people who are like you and people who are drastically different.
See you next week!