Stand Out by Producing Content That’s Authentic, Entertaining, Interesting, and Human

In a Nutshell: To stand out from all the fake news and clickbait cluttering your audience’s inboxes, you have to produce content that’s authentic, entertaining, interesting, and above all, human.

Guest: Brooke Southall, the founder of RIABiz. Back in 2009, Brooke built his online-only news publication on traditional journalistic values like using multiple sources and editorial analysis. Brooke and his team captured the rise of new models for providing client-first financial advice against the backdrop of Wall Street’s decline during the Great Recession. Today, RIABiz is one of the go-to sources for deep, sophisticated analysis of the most important issues affecting the RIA business.

My Key Takeaway: To create engaging, authentic content:

1. Don’t be boring. Before you even start writing, ask yourself, “Is this an article I would click on or swipe past?”
2. Slow down. Brooke believes that the race to be first has really hurt online journalism. Working important news into your regular communication rhythm will result in better content than a rushed newsletter.
3. Keep your eyes open. Brooke says the key to writing good articles isn’t great writing ability, it’s curiosity about the world and other people.

Also Learn:

1. Why hiking with his dogs is an integral part of Brooke’s writing process.
2. How to use other people’s stories as a jumping-off point for your next blog or newsletter.
3. What separates a compelling headline from pure clickbait.
4. Why Brooke believes showing weakness is more important to good writing than demonstrating success.

Complementary Episode: My conversation with Wes Moss, the chief investment strategist of Capital Investment Advisors, about using writing to start building your own media presence. Listen/read here.

Resources Featured In This Episode

“Growing a Business” by Paul Hawken Brooke says this is the best business book he’s ever read.

“Moneyball” by Michael Lewis A fantastic example of how to use a good hook (baseball) to tell a much larger story (how we value things) that will appeal to a wide audience.

“Clapton: The Autobiography” If you love the classic rock era as much as I do you won’t be able to put this down. But I’m recommending it because it’s a lesson in the power of honesty and vulnerability in writing.

Values Clarification Toolkit Click here to download this FREE tool and start living your values.

Full Transcript

Steve Sanduski: In this era of fake news and clickbait headlines, it’s hard to tell what to believe or who to trust when it comes to the media. Well, back in 2009 in the heart of the great recession, a reporter decided he wanted to start an online, only news publication that was built on traditional journalistic values and used sourced journalism and editorial analysis to capture the rise of new models for providing client first financial advice against the backdrop of wall Street’s decline. And thus was born, RIABiz, which is now considered one of the go-to sources for deep, sophisticated analysis of the most important issues affecting the RIA business. And my guest today to talk about that is Brooke Southall. Brooke is the founder of riabiz.com and he and I talked about the state of journalism today, writing engaging stories, where ideas come from, the keys to being a great writer, the do’s and don’ts of working with the media and so much more. And with that, please enjoy my conversation with Brooke Southall. Brooke, welcome to the show.

Brooke Southall: Hi, Steve. Thank you for having me on it.

Steve Sanduski: Yeah. Well, this is exciting. I always love talking to journalists, and you and I don’t think we’ve ever actually met in person. I know we’ve communicated a number of times via email over the years, and I’ve always admired the work that you’ve done here at RIABiz and just the audacity it took to start a financial publication just in the teeth of the great financial crisis and recession back in 08, 09. So I’m really looking forward to the time with you here.

Brooke Southall: Yes. Thank you very much. And probably audacious is a better word than a courageous.

Steve Sanduski: Probably takes both. Why don’t we start there? Let’s go back to that period of time. You had been working for InvestmentNews, I think from 2000 to 2008 or so. So about eight years at InvestmentNews, really understanding the business. What happened? How did you decide that you wanted to start an independent publication?

Brooke Southall: I left InvestmentNews with the idea that I just be a freelancer, and I was for about six months to a year with all the publications that we now compete with, with the exception of InvestmentNews. And I found that I was pitching RIA related articles, which was my forte. And I was finding that very few of them were being accepted. And as a journalist, it was like having cash burning a hole in my pocket or something to know that I had a great story, but have editors who were not receptive to those stories.

And I was actually on the phone with a PR person from one of the big custodians that I mentioned that frustration and she said, “Why don’t you start your own?” And I said, “Well, I don’t have that sort of technical or business expertise.” And she said, “It’s really easy to start a publication these days, you just get a website and off you go, just start throwing things on there.” So I thought to myself, maybe I can even handle that. That pretty much sums up my thinking when I got going.

Steve Sanduski: Well, it’s certainly worked because you’ve been around now, here we are in 2020. And after that start there in 2008, I know this is a go-to publication for so many people in the financial industry. And I think you’ve really filled a hole that was out there. And you have a unique take on the industry, a unique take on the news, you have very high journalistic standards. So just a real kudos and pat on the back for what you’ve done there. So, what I’d love to talk about today in terms of kind of the crux of the conversation is just talking about story, talking about communication and how you and I, we both love journalism, we love writing, we love communicating in various forms. And I would just love to learn a little bit more about how you, as a journalist, how do you think about the stories that you’re telling in your publication? What makes a good story?

Brooke Southall: Well, I always joke that I have a bad case of ADHD and when I read articles, I get bored very easily. So when I think about what I’m going to write, I think about what won’t bore me. And I find that there are a few things that consistently are interesting to readers. It comes down to all the fundamentals that people talk about with storytelling, but it has to be hung on hard news, I believe. And if it’s not hard news, it has to at least be a hard change in opinion by somebody who matters, maybe. It has to be some new data. It has to be a transaction. Has to be a higher… And then that needs to be connected back to the bigger stream of what’s happening so that somebody feels a connection to that story. So, you cannot build a house without structure, without an infrastructure.

That’s what we spend a lot of our time doing, is trying to find what we can hang the story on. And it really requires both. We can’t just have some nifty little anecdote and we can’t just have a bunch of data. A minor symphony of things have to happen for any given story to take hold. And I think people tend to fixate on one or the other, maybe the way they would, if they’re on a diet, they’d want to just think of it a bit as it being a protein diet or a carbohydrate diet or, but the key is always balance and understanding that reader interest has to be placed highest on the list.

Has to be something that somebody is going to read the headline and that will get them to the first line, and then the first line will get them to the second line on down through. And it can’t be, can’t kind of back into it. It can’t be super subtle. It’s not a place for poetry and art and so on. It can be all that once you’ve done the compulsories of keeping somebody interested and letting them know why they’re reading it.

Steve Sanduski: So your audience is typically the financial advisory community and the corporations and people in those corporations that are supporting the financial advisory community. So they may be looking for the hard news. And how have you over the years navigated how the journalism industry, the media has evolved in recent years, maybe in the past decade or two, where it’s spent so much about clickbait headlines, listicles, I mean, all this stuff to get people to the page, to click on it so that they can get more page views, so that they can sell more ads. And then they can have these take over things that take over the home page and they want to get your email address so they can send you an email newsletter and those sorts of things. How have you been able to avoid the worst of those things yet still have a viable business over all these years?

Brooke Southall: Well, thank you for asking that question, because that is probably the question that I would most like to answer.

Steve Sanduski: Oh, good!

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