Content Entrepreneur Expo 2025 Event Highlights
“It’s going to get weirder before it gets better.”
This was, more or less, the theme for the 4th annual Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX). On the stage, Jay Acunzo was speaking about how to be a speaker. Very meta.
In the crowd, there was an excited buzz. Not just because Jay is a great speaker and knows how to engage and entertain. If you’ve never been in a space with hundreds of dedicated, capable, and driven creators, you should try it. There is an energy these folks bring that is unmatched.
What is Content Entrepreneur Expo?
The Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX) is an event founded by the ‘godfather’ of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi. The author of 10 books, including his newest, Burn the Playbook, Joe has been at the center of content marketing and entrepreneurship for a long, long time.
The event does something other creator-focused events don’t: it gets in the weeds with a small, dedicated group of creators. This isn’t Inbound, with upwards of a thousand people packed into a massive convention center to hear some celebrity sharing anecdotes only vaguely related to marketing. You won’t find yourself sitting so far from a keynote speaker that they are only a tiny, human-shaped blur up on the stage.
CEX is a two-day, concentrated event for creators to meet, network, learn, and have fun.
As the primary sponsor of CEX, Lulu was there to meet creators, promote publishing, and answer your questions about being an independent entrepreneur.
The Lulu Booth
We brought a ton of amazing books by creators and entrepreneurs to highlight just how important a book is to your business. And if you don’t believe us, you can ask any of the amazing presenters from CEX 2025. Almost all of them have their own books.
Live From CEX: Publish & Prosper Creator Interviews
Hosts Matt and Lauren chat with speakers and creators from the event.
Creator Events Are Community
I spent my days at CEX chatting, listening, and absorbing the wisdom of the best creators in the business today. For those of you not fortunate enough to attend, I’ve got my top highlights to share.
Mind you, I didn’t attend all the sessions, so this is just a snippet of what CEX 2025 had to offer.
CEX Day 1
We opened the event with three back-to-back presenters. Joe Pulizzi kicked us off by running through the six principles he covers in his new book. I’m not going to spoil it. I strongly recommend you go and buy a copy. And honestly, everything else this man has written. If you want to make it as a content entrepreneur, you need to absorb Joe’s wisdom.
After that, I spent the morning with Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, listening to his strategy for reaching millions of readers. He breaks the process down into three rather simple steps:
- Start early
- Go deeper
- Stay longer
Andy makes a very sound argument for more engaging, visually pleasing content. We can’t create articles or videos like it's 2010. That simply doesn’t work for modern followers or the algorithms we rely on for discovery. Start early with your message, make your content deep and well-researched, and circle back to update it as the times change. With that strategy, creators like you can do more with less and still reach new readers.
Next, I had the opportunity to attend a couple of breakout sessions. First, I had the pleasure of listening in on Austin Church’s discussion about creating systems and processes for your content business. I have to be honest, Austin is such a fun speaker, and I didn’t take a single note. The founder of Freelance Cake, Austin helps creators work less and earn more. He made a sound argument for building repeatable, simple processes to ensure you’re not missing anything while continuously pleasing your fans.
Next up is Fernando Labastida, perhaps a less well-known creator than Andy, Austin, or Joe, but no less skilled. He detailed how to use your expertise to not only stand out in your niche (or is it nitch?*). He described the best ways to define a ‘category’ for yourself. He said, “Category design is the discipline of creating and developing a new market category and conditioning the market so it will demand your solution and crown you as its king (or queen).”
How powerful is that? If you can find a nuanced way to approach a topic that no one else is taking, you own that content niche and instantly position yourself as the expert. I can’t think of any better way to be the expert in your space.
We ended day one with some inspiring keynotes from Rita McNeil Danish (discussing content distribution that builds community) and Darrell Vesterfelt (who highlighted ways we can stand out in an AI-driven content world).
But the star for me was Mark Schaefer.
One of my favorite content creators and one of the best voices to listen to if you want to grow your own content business, Mark is one of the writers I’m always eager to read. If you’re not already subscribed to his blog, you should be.
Mark had one simple and clear message: if we want to beat the AI bots inundating the web with slop content, we have to access our weird. Which may sound a bit strange, but what he really means is that we need to be authentic humans.
Among many quotable statements Mark made, this one stands out to me: “No more forgettable content.”
Think long and hard about how you can create something valuable, human, and 100% unforgettable. This is how you win at content creation and earn a devoted following.
CEX Day 2
Jay Acunzo kicked it off day two, followed by Amanda Northcutt and Amy Landino. The message from all three was clear: be genuine and play the right game. Amanda centered her talk around chess vs. checkers. Both games use the same board, but are wildly different. How can you win at checkers if the industry you’re in is playing chess?
She said (and I’m paraphrasing because I was too entranced to take down the exact quote): “For most, the problem isn’t wisdom, it’s ambition.”
That’s so true. Anyone working in the creator space knows what they’re talking about. We’re all subject matter experts to some degree. But it’s about having the ambition to push that wisdom, to find digestible ways to share it, and honest ways to monetize it.
After that, I attended a session hosted by one of my favorite people: Robbie Fitzwater. Robbie’s team at MKTG Rhythm uses data and analytics to craft incredible (and effective) marketing campaigns. He spoke on one of my favorite topics: data. Robbie is a data nerd to the highest degree. He touched on the ways SEO is changing (thanks, ChatGPT) and emphasized how important owned channels (like email and SMS) will be going forward. If you don’t already have an email or SMS list, you need one.
Day two closed with some amazing keynote speakers.
We started with Robert Rose, one of the most prolific presenters I’ve had the honor of being in the audience for. Robert discussed his new book, Valuable Friction, and how we need some amount of resistance (the friction) to make better content. This rings particularly true in an age of AI content.
After that, Joe came back on the main stage to chat with the enigmatic Ann Handley. If you’re a writer and you’re not subscribed to her newsletter, do yourself a favor and sign up. They talked about the routes to publishing, how to know the right way to publish your book, and, of course, why it’s so important as a content creator that you publish something.
Last up was Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive. Wil is at the forefront of modern SEO. His talk was full of energy and had one critical message for everyone working to get found online: write like a human. Much like Mark Schaefer’s prompt that we access our weirdness, Wil reassured the crowd that writing for algorithms and LLMs might earn you more traffic, but it won’t earn you more fans. He backed it up with a wealth of data he gathered from testing his own content.
Wrapping Up CEX 2025
If there was one overarching message from everyone at this year’s Content Entrepreneur Expo, it’s that we have to be humans in our content. AI is everywhere. We all see our search traffic dipping thanks to Google’s AI overview. We all fear our content is becoming irrelevant when everyone rushes to ChatGPT to write their emails, social posts, and more.
But the message from this group of successful content creators could not be more clear: people want to hear from other real people. LLMs are great for sifting through large amounts of data and answering questions. People—creators like you—are still the source for those answers. When you are an expert in your niche, you still have the ability to earn trusted followers and build a real audience who love your content.
Oh yeah, and we had an 80s-themed silent disco.
Keep creating!
*it’s not
