Adam Torres and Christy Pretzinger discuss WG Content.
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Show Notes:
What does it take to build relationships one word at a time? In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Christy Pretzinger, CEO of WG Content. Explore the WG Content journey along with Christy’s upcoming book, Your Cultural Balance Sheet: Strategies for Creating an Environment Where People Can Thrive.
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About Christy Pretzinger
Christy Pretzinger is the CEO of WG Content, they have transformed the landscape of healthcare content creation. Being among the first to specialize in healthcare content, Christy grew up with the industry, and WG Content is now an industry-leading agency that delivers superior content strategy and creation to healthcare brands across the country.
Christy shares her passion for creating an environment where people can thrive with other leaders and to that end, she authors the upcoming book, Your Cultural Balance Sheet: Strategies for Creating Environments Where People Can Thrive.
About WG Content
More than 20 years ago, WG Content became the first company to focus solely on content for the healthcare industry. As savvy communicators with combined decades of content strategy and creation, they partner with clients to drive traffic to websites, optimize search, capture leads, provide bold marketing solutions and much more. All while cultivating unique soft skills that create strong connections. From search-optimized blog posts to infographics, website overhauls to email campaigns, they’re ready to help you build relationships one word at a time.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to become an author and one of our upcoming books, head on over to mission matters. com and click on, become an author to apply. All right. So today’s special guest is Christie, Christie Pretzinger, and she’s CEO over at WG content, which is into strategy and creation, which we’ll get into that in a moment, but Christie, first off, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right. So writer girl rebrands to WG content. So we’re, we’ll go into the history of that. Obviously we’re wider writer, girl came from, and obviously what you’re doing now with WG content that, and a whole lot more, but just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So, Christy, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Christy, what mission matters to you? The mission that matters the most to me is creating an environment where people can thrive, and then hopefully sharing that message with other people.
In leadership positions. So Christy thank you for sharing that first off and great having other mission based leaders on the show to share what they do and how they do it so we can all learn and grow together, but just to get us kicked off here, content creation strategy, like where’d all that begin for you, like, wait, take me way back.
Oh gosh, if I take you way back, I can’t even remember a lot of it, but I actually started out as a freelance writer in the olden days, and then after doing that for about 10 years, started building what became writer girl. And it was really just a freelance writing business. And then I ended up having a local company and agency invite asked me to provide a team of writers to a very large content management system creation, like 10, 000 pages of content.
Sorry, excuse me, 1000 pages of content. So we did that. It went very well. And I thought, okay, I’ll bring teams of writers to projects and then fast forward a few months and a former client from when I’d been a freelancer was now working at a hospital system and they were launching three websites concurrently and she asked me to help create the content for that.
So we did that. That was probably a nine to 12 month long project. It was, it was very stressful. Given the fact that I knew nothing about the industry, but after doing that and seeing the success of it. I decided that I would bring teams of writers to hospital projects. And then as anyone who has ever built a business does, I told myself the necessary lie that it would be easy to do, you know, nothing.
If, if, if everything was easy, right. I mean, if everything, Wasn’t easy. You wouldn’t do it, right? Just tell yourself it’s easy. And then you go dig it and do the hard work. So I did that. And and then over time it became what it is. And it’s, we, we offer so much more than just writing or content creation.
And when I say content creation, I don’t mean social media. I know a lot of people use that term content creator. Our content is more like sometimes just website content, white papers, it might be a physician bios or patient stories. It could also be graphics, infographics, video things like that.
So we, we span the world and then we do a lot of content strategy as well. So that’s why we rebranded to more fully capture all of the services that we offer and the size of our organization. So I want to stick in the earlier days a little bit longer because you’ve been just based off of building the business, the size of the organization.
Now, the success you’ve had in your niche. I mean, there’s a lot behind that, but the early days of like freelance writing, then versus. Can you comment just on the industry as a whole? Cause I know that’s, that’s a big part of what you’re doing still when you’re attracting new writers and new talent. Like, can you talk about the industry as a whole, what that looks like?
Well it’s interesting because now I work very much on the business as opposed to in the business. So when it comes to the actual industry, the healthcare ecosphere, I rely much more on my leadership team, the people who work. Directly with our clients and the people who are selling into that industry.
I definitely do not have my finger on the pulse of that as much as they do. And they very much do. I, I’m sorry, I can’t answer that question more more eloquently, but I don’t want to misstate something because I wouldn’t, I would not be the expert on that. I, as I said, I work on the business as opposed to in the business.
Yeah. So as you were, as you started and thank you for sharing that as you started let’s just say going further down your niche. How did you know that you found the right one? Like, how did you know you were going to be working within these hospital and healthcare like ecosystems? How did you know?
Well, first of all, the, the project that I had worked on that was not the only one of its kind that was out. Gosh, I have to think back. How many years ago is that? Probably around 2007. So however long ago that is and that time and it continues to this day. There were a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on within the hospital space.
So a lot of the smaller hospitals, as as many people know, have disappeared. They’ve been gobbled up or they’ve been shut down. And so as a result, when these mergers are happening, the They have to rebrand and they have to bring other hospitals under their brand or sometimes they combine brands to a new one.
So that means they have a whole lot of work they have to do in terms of their website content. Sometimes it’s a whole lift and shift. What we call it is taking the existing website and shifting it to a new name and then little by little updating that content. Sometimes it’s all at once and you do it.
And there’s a launch date at the end. It really depends. But that was what was going on at the time. So I saw the opportunity there. And as many people know, luck is preparation meeting opportunity, right? And so I saw that and thought, wow. And as we all know, our health care world in the United States is chaotic and chaos breeds opportunity.
So so I definitely saw that that made sense. But when you mentioned the niche, something that I think is important to share is that Because I was a writer, that was my niche. I did not, people kept saying, Oh, you should go into like user experience, UX and all of that SEO. You should do website design and wireframes and all of that.
And I was like, absolutely not. And I don’t want to look stupid in content, you know? And so that’s what we did. And then as we grew and we have a lot more people, we still do not do. UX or design. Now, of course we write for search and we have expertise in that, but we are not an SEO organization. So you and I feel like many, many people that are very successful pick that niche and go further down and don’t try to be like all things to everyone, like just be an expert at what you’re really great at.
And that’s what you’re describing now. So it, it kind of makes sense why you’ve been successful in this niche. That being said. said. So now I want to kind of build on this story. So now, you know, you found your niche, you’re doing your success, you’re bringing on big projects, you’re obviously attracting talent to be able to fulfill the projects.
And you mentioned something earlier that you’re going to kind of, you know, quote unquote start this business or go down that entrepreneur route and it’s going to be easier than you thought. Like what was that like when you finally started taking on that additional responsibility, being responsible for others, building your leadership team, like take us through that piece of it.
Yeah, that you know, I think that for me as an entrepreneur, in my experience of that, there’s a lot of fear that is underneath all of it. That just keeps you motivated and keeps you going. Cause when I started, it was just me and a few contractors. And so as I added people as actual employees, everything changed.
And you start to get. Scary, right? That, that for those first employees, they’re not like, you’re like, that’s a scary moment. scary moment. And then, you know, as you add more and more and in various stages of growth, I added people who I knew I wanted on the bus, but I may not have had the perfect seat for them.
So I would add them to the bus, find something for them to do, knowing that with growth, we would have the position for them. So that’s a risky place to be too, because I hired people that we didn’t have billable work for. So they were in a pure expense, but I knew that they were going to be a valuable addition to the team at some point.
And that has proven to be true, but that’s a, that’s something that as an entrepreneur, I think you have to have a very healthy relationship with risk and understand, you know, kind of the, the, The exposure that you’re, you’re putting your organization through. But I, I often share the story that as an entrepreneur, I don’t know any entrepreneur who doesn’t at some point still fear that they could end up if they’re lucky living in a trailer by the river, destroyed everybody else’s life.
You know, which, you know, it, it’s just one of those things, you know, I mean, I think that I personally take my responsibility, my fiduciary responsibility very seriously. But also my responsibility as a leader of this organization and the privilege that I have to feed into the lives of the people who work for this company.
Yeah. And the, the, the wise words of Chris Farley, ah, they still ring true. And I, I echo that statement. Absolutely. I still think about that. Obviously hindsight being 2020. And I asked this question for, I try to always get in a pay it forward question when I can new group of entrepreneurs that are coming out there and making their way.
If you could do something different, like what would it have been? Obviously benefit of hindsight being 2020. Obviously. Well, I share this a lot because this was a very big mistake of mine. I studied French in college. I didn’t have business background. I was a freelance writer. So as I was building the business for me personally, and this, this might not make Since I’m not really sure, but to a lot of people that go in, you’re good at something.
So you start doing that as a business. And for me, I did not have the language of business, which was really a huge financial mistake. It’s very basic now. It’s part of my DNA, but at the time I didn’t know the difference between accrued and cash basis accounting, which is huge because then I ended up getting a divorce and I paid spousal support based on cash.
And the fact was that my business collects a lot of cash, but then we have to work it off. So it was kind of a, a false premise, but it, you know, that was a long time ago and it worked out. So I would say, make sure that you are very aware of of the language of business, but also that you have very good accounting people.
And the lesson I learned is that CPA just means you passed a test. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have financial acumen. Oh, well said there, Christy. You’re dropping, you’re dropping knowledge for us all here. I hope everybody watching is definitely picking this up because it’s good stuff. I want to progress the story a little bit further now.
So now, you know, you’re, this is a big moment. So you’re rebranding from Writer Girl. What you, you said, briefly, but I want to go a little bit deeper here. Like what led to that rebrand? Like something that you were already doing was working. It’s always difficult and hard to do a rebrand or to make that decision ultimately when something’s working.
Like what led to that? Well, for a few years, we had been wondering, we probably about five or six years ago, we asked clients what they thought of the name, should we change the name? And while many of them said, It may not fully capture everything that you do, but everybody knows the name, you know, it’s a very easy brand to remember.
That’s the hard part about it all always. Yeah. And some legacy.
As strip team, we’re out talking with various clients and they were talking to people we work with tend to be at a director level and they were out talking to like CMOs, CEOs of these systems. And these people were consistently surprised. at the, the, the vast offerings that we have. And they felt we were much smaller than we were.
So we’re like, all right, I think it’s time. And so we’ve been thinking about it for a while. And then we were in a leadership team meeting. We were just kind of talking about it. And I said, you know, I’ve looked up wg. com and it’s owned by somebody in China. We can’t get it. And then I went, I was sitting there and kind of went online.
I said, what do you guys think about WG content? And they were like, I like it. I’m like, okay, I’m buying the URL. We don’t have to do it, but what do we think? And so we did that. And then we’re like, you know, we like it. And then we decided that with a tagline of strategy and creation to kind of round out what we actually do.
And obviously we held on to the WG legacy. And when we did the rebrand, we kept kind of, we kept the same colors and we modified the logo so that it wouldn’t be something shocking so that we’re going to a conference next week and we will have a booth. And is that the first test drive with like the, it’ll be reminiscent of the old one, the same colors, the same thing.
But when they come and look closer, you’re like, Oh, that’s a new name, you know, so we’re doing a celebration and a big reveal at the conference. So that will be fine. Oh, that is so fun. And is this reminds me of so earlier in our day. So our original brand in the very, very beginning of this company was actually money matters.
It wasn’t mission matters. And the reason it was money matters is because at that time I was, I was a financial advisor. I mean, this is. You know, eight years ago or so. I haven’t been doing that for a long time or maybe 10 years now. But that being said originally we thought this was going to be a platform just to talk about money.
And as the as the, the concept grew, the interviews grew, the platform grew, and then really the mission became more clear that we, we look back and we’re like, eh, only 20 percent of the content, maybe if there’s. That is only focused on money. So like, it was very difficult to make that decision because money matters was working.
It’s hard enough to build one media company, let alone sign on to build the second, especially if it’s working and you have to relaunch everything and do all these other things. But I’ll tell you what, for me, it’s, it’s interesting because it like, I know where it took us. It definitely took us to a whole nother level, broader audience, all those other things you can imagine.
So when I think about your story and I mean, as, as many of you. Well, as you and your team and everything, but doing that, like up to this point, like I’m excited. I’m just excited as, as excited for your rebrand as I was for ours. I’m like, Oh, you got it. You got to tell me how the reveal goes. It’s going to be amazing.
It’s going to be interesting to see. It’s going to be very interesting to see, but you know, I love what you just said too, about going from talking about money to mission. Yeah. I think that when you talk about money. yes, money is nice to have. But the way that I have experienced in my life, the way that money has come to me is through a mission, you know, it’s actually, I’ve never really done anything just for money.
And you know, I’ve not had money and I’ve had money and trust me, I’d rather have it. But the mission behind it is the driver. And that’s, that’s in my experience, what, what brings me the most joy and the most growth. Yeah, that, that’s I completely agree. And I’m not, and I thought I didn’t really even think about the real potential for the platform and to make a difference and to have different types of conversations and connect with people.
So I echo everything you said, and I definitely agree with that. Circling back to really the success of what. You know, has made in this case WG content. I’m gonna start using the new one. I got to, I wanna what, what’s made it so successful. Like talk to me about the this is historically, I wouldn’t argue the easiest space to get into when you’re talking about work with hospitals and referrals, I mean, a lot of that is you have to be known in the space, in my opinion like talk to me about like what it’s meant to build relationships and where, how that has played a, maybe a factor or a part in what you’ve been able to accomplish.
Actually, that’s a great question because our mission as an organization is building relationships one word at a time. So that literally is our why it’s our driver. And whenever we start talking about the things that we do, and obviously the people who do the work talk about a lot, it’s very important, but we always come back to its relationships.
And it’s all relationship driven. So we are not transactional in any way. So as I was building the business, though, one of the things that was challenging for me was that I didn’t know at the time, it only was in hindsight that I could see that we were creating a new category. There were no businesses that created content strictly for the healthcare space at the time.
So when I was out and I was the solopreneur, basically I was selling, I was operating, I was doing all the things when I would be out selling this to people. I would have to describe what we were by telling them what we weren’t like, we’re not an ad agency where you talk to someone like me who has a lot of experience.
And then we put somebody junior on it. And then you have to train them how to do it. Everybody that you’re going to work with is at least if not more experienced than I am, you know, so it was, it was like trying to define it that way. So doing that was interesting, but I didn’t, I didn’t know that it was hard to get into healthcare.
You know, I didn’t, I didn’t know that, that it was hard to create a category. I just did it. And I think that’s what a lot of entrepreneurs do. I mean, I’m, it’s a different world now today. I mean, this was back in 2005 when I started this, but today I think a lot of people, there’s, there’s VC money everywhere, there’s PE money everywhere and businesses are built to be sold.
And that is not my mission or my reason at all for what I’ve done or what I continue to do. So that’s somewhat different too. It’s, it was more about, it was kind of very old school. I bootstrapped it. I kind of just started working. I believed in it. I knew that we could do this. And then as I started adding people to the team who were so impressive and didn’t, you know, the part of the magic was having you know, being not worrying about my ego and making sure that I hired people, taught them what I knew and then told them to go do it better.
And trust me, every single one of them does. I mean, they’re, they’re just remarkable. I mean, I, I jokingly say I’m the only one in the organization who’s done every task. And I’m also probably singularly the one who could do none of them now. They’re so excellent at what they do and far surpassed anything that that I ever did when I did it.
And so that’s, that’s a real key to success too, is making sure that you hire people smarter than you. And this and I’m guessing like some of these relationships, even from early on, whether they’re with hospitals, clients or otherwise, like people, it’s a pretty like people stay in organizations and they stay in the field.
They’re not normally hopping around a bit. So I’m guessing like these have been some of these have been some really long lasting relationships. Yeah. Yeah, very long lasting. In fact, after that first project that I worked on I decided, as I said, to bring, you know, hospital groups of writers to hospitals.
Well, nobody in my hometown would speak to me. So I went to, I know it’s like, it can’t be a profit in your own hometown. Jesus had to go somewhere else. It’s okay. Exactly, I had to go somewhere else. I went North, I’m in Ohio. So I went into Columbus, Ohio to the Ohio State University. And Actually, that wasn’t even the one.
I went and did a big presentation to another big hospital system up there and thought, well, I’m here, I’ll stop by OSU and really connected with the marketing director there and we started working with them and that was in, I think, 2007 or eight and they remain a client to this day. So that’s a, you know, very long lasting and that’s gone through many iterations and lots of things with them.
But to your point, yes, some very, very long relationship. We have a lot of repeat clients. Yeah. And those, and those early days of you really being in the trenches, like these are my favorite entrepreneur stories because like, that’s where you found your kind of your product market fit. Like that’s where you found what was going to work.
That’s where you were able to all those, you know, hundreds and hundreds, I’m sure of conversations is what you, how you not only defined your organization, but also like how you were going to serve best. Yeah, very much. And, and also too, when I started building this business I told my accountant at the time, That if I could not build a business based on kindness, I would go back to being a freelancer.
Now, that was an intention. And then as any entrepreneur, I put my head down and started working and didn’t think much about it. But it’s interesting in hindsight, again, I can say from my own experience that when you have an intention like that, whatever it might be, whatever anybody else’s intention is that then looking back at it about four or five years ago, we were working with some consultants and they.
surveyed all of the employees and asked them, What is the core of our business? The thing without which we would not exist. And it became it was our culture, which I think is really interesting. And our culture, our values are we’re empowered, curious, kind and fun. And so that culture That environment where people can thrive is, in fact, the core of our business and in my own experience is a driver of both revenue and net income because of the, you know, lack of turnover, the relationship building, keeping long term clients and all of those things.
So, as you mentioned earlier, kind of it all comes back to relationships, which is, you know, not really a hard skill that you’re offering, but it’s hugely important. so much. Absolutely. All right. So I want to jump, I want to jump around here a little bit. So you have an upcoming book for all those that are watching this and that have been listening to this show for a long time.
You know, I love talking about authors. I love talking about books. I’m a huge fan of people writing and publishing books and not, not just with us as publishers, but just in general, I feel like it’s just so gratifying when you’re on the other side of being a published author. And when you take the time to put together a full book, Full body of work, whatever that looks like for you and bringing that out and, you know, being vulnerable enough to, to put that out in the world and to, and to see what happens and to promote your ideas.
So Christie, tell me about the upcoming book. The upcoming book is called your cultural balance sheet strategies for creating an environment where people can thrive. And the interesting thing about how that came about was I was having dinner with some friends and we were talking about business as you do.
And several of them had had successful exits, either, you know, selling their businesses or whatever. And so we were talking about all of that and I said, you know, it’s funny. I don’t really look at my business through the lens of a balance sheet. I mean, obviously I look at the balance sheet but I said I really look at it through the lens of a cultural balance sheet And so I kind of had an epiphany and I thought oh that’s the title of a book That is the title of a book those dinners that get you sometimes you have a good dinner Then you’re on the hook for a book.
See what happens Absolutely. So So one of my, the co author that I’m working with is also an employee of WG content. She’s a brilliant writer. And so we were pulling it together and looking at a pub date of summer. And it’s all about talking about assets, you know, cultural assets, cultural liabilities and cultural equity and kind of, you know, carrying that metaphor through, but basically saying that, you know, talking about what those things are and in, in my experience, the interesting thing is About the cultural assets, liabilities and equity is that the cultural liabilities, if you focus on them, if you give them intention and attention, you can actually turn them into assets and it just requires attention to do that.
And then also the cultural equity is actually the culture itself that becomes the equity that, that you build through looking at your business through that lens. So I find the the book writing process to be both fun, creative, but also torture at times. That’s my experience. So, so it’s rare that I get to get to talk to somebody when they’re in the middle of the book writing process, because normally I get somebody booked on the show, like after it’s live and other things like that.
So so it’s fun for me to ask them questions. you this next question, which is, have you, did you, have you been learning anything about yourself or even some things are having some aha moments along the way that you didn’t even expect as you’ve kind of delved into the into the book writing process?
Yeah, it’s hard is what I’ve learned. I’ve never done it before and it’s hard. And and it’s hard to kind of decide on a structure, decide on how you’re going to do it because you could end up being all over the place. And so for me, what’s worked really well is having a coauthor. And then even more importantly is having an outside editor, somebody that I knew from a long time ago when I worked at a book publishing company.
And he has a lot of expertise in nonfiction. publishing. So that’s very helpful to be like, okay, together. Like, I think it takes a village. Everything takes a village, right? Having people help me do that because I’m the one with the, the actual content. And yet my coauthor is a much better writer than I am.
I mean, I can write and I can write well, she’s makes it sing. And so we kind of work together. And plus she’s worked at the organization for I think nine years now. Amazing. Amazing. She’s experienced to this culture and so she can in imbue the book with her experience of it as well. So I would say the biggest thing is that it’s hard, but you know, kind of one of my mantras is to seek joy in all things.
So as I do it, I think, okay, this is new, this is fun. This is like keeping the neuro neuroplasticity, firing, you know, doing something. Oh yeah. So, yeah. Get those synapses going. I’m in what about, what about for your ideas or ideology? Cause I know when you start going, it’s one thing to, and maybe you’ve always had them clearly defined and written.
Maybe not. I know I haven’t, when I’ve gone through some of my books and started that process and I’d really was forced to. You know, I knew broad strokes about what I was saying and what I was doing, but I hadn’t necessarily refined them to that sharp edge that you need to put them in a book, so to speak.
What about that? Did anything surprise you or has anything surprised you up to this point and kind of refining like your thought process? What kind of did it? Probably the opposite way of a lot of people. What happened is that I’m in an organization called Entrepreneurs Organization. It’s anybody knows about it.
Yeah, it’s great. And so they do something called Global Speakers Academy every year and you have to apply and then get accepted. And I was accepted a couple years ago, and I went to the UK for a week long workshop. On how to craft a signature talk, which I’m comfortable speaking in front of people, but I didn’t know how to craft like a Ted talk.
Yeah. Well, I went with different, like speaking extraneously. I can never say that word, right. Or like, just like off the cuff versus like having your, your Ted talks different. Correct. Very different. And so this wonderful group, I’ll give them a plug called speaker labs out of Canada. They’re amazing. I went in there on Monday.
Tuesday. I was like, I do this. I think I’m just go do it. And then through t coaching by thursday, I h signature talk, which was helped me through asking craft the message, which then I built into the book. So it’s kind of the opposite. A lot of times people write the book and then they craft the talk. I crafted the talk and then pulled it out into a book.
So it was a little bit, I think that might be different than a lot of people’s process. I like it. I love it actually, because then you went through that, that tough part, like in advance. So you had more clarity even going into the process. So, I mean, I would, I would lump those together into the process. So you either way, you got to go through the pain at some point.
That’s true. And it was painful, but boy, it was, it sure does help to have good coaches. Love it. Well, well, Christy, I mean, first off, this has been, you know, great having you on the show. I’m excited for the upcoming book. I’m excited for the rebrand to to WG content. But that being said, I mean, what’s next, what’s next for you?
What’s next for your vision for the company? Well, you know, there’s, in terms of vision for the company, there’s a lot of opportunity for us. You know, we know that our, our, as I say, on our website, our roots are in healthcare, but our wings can take us anywhere. And by having this rebrand, it allows us to move into other vertical markets.
And we don’t know what those will be yet. We’ve been very busy with the rebrand, but we’re kind of dipping our toe in other areas. So I would expect to see us serving other other vertical markets other than healthcare. I do not know what this will be. But I am very confident that they will present themselves and that we will do as well there.
It’d be kind of fun to do that too. Yeah. Well, well, that’s exciting. If somebody’s watching this and they want to learn more or want to follow up with your team, how do they do that? Oh, you can go to wgcontent. com and you can go to the meet our team page and you can find everybody there. I’m there. All of our contact information is there.
We’re also on LinkedIn is WG content, and you can find all sorts of things as well as there will eventually be a link to this program as well. Amazing. And for everybody watching, we’ll put all those links into the show notes. And and you can just click on the links, head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters we’re up with, this is a daily show each and every day.
We’re bringing on new founders, new entrepreneurs, and new executives. haven’t done it yet. Don’t forget, hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Christy, again, thank you so much and looking forward to this upcoming book.
So appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
