
How to Create a Winning Twitter Content Strategy to Grow Your Business with Cathy McPhillips
with Shane Barker
On this episode of The Marketing Growth Podcast, Shane Barker hosts Cathy McPhillips, VP of Marketing at the Content Marketing Institute, to explore an effective Twitter content plan. Cathy highlights how to foster real connections through Twitter chats, underscores the impact of strategic hashtag use, and recounts her path in marketing—showcasing why genuine community-building matters. Tune in for fresh insights on amplifying your Twitter presence and driving tangible growth.


Cathy McPhillips is the Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute, where she spearheads strategic initiatives that help marketers embrace and apply artificial intelligence to drive business growth. Leveraging over two decades of marketing experience, Cathy guides the development of innovative programs, partnerships, and thought leadership that demystify AI for marketing professionals worldwide.
Before joining Marketing AI Institute, Cathy spent nearly a decade at the Content Marketing Institute, managing large-scale events and educational programs that shaped industry best practices and community engagement. A frequent speaker at major marketing conferences, her insights on AI-powered marketing, content strategy, and audience engagement have been featured in leading publications, establishing her as a trusted authority in the evolving digital landscape.
Episode Show Notes
In this episode of “The Marketing Growth Podcast,” host Shane Barker welcomes Cathy McPhillips, VP of Marketing at the Content Marketing Institute, to explore how to create a winning Twitter content strategy. Cathy highlights the importance of consistent engagement, harnessing hashtags, and fostering a sense of community. She shares how Twitter chats can spark genuine conversations and connect like-minded professionals around shared interests. Cathy also discusses the significance of building relationships, not just followers, and how to repurpose content for maximum reach.
Beyond Twitter, Cathy reveals her journey, from working at ad agencies to running her own consultancy before joining CMI. She stresses the value of mentorship and practical experience in today’s fast-paced digital world. Cathy’s passion for philanthropy shines through her involvement in several nonprofits, reflecting her commitment to making a positive impact through marketing.
Tune in to discover how to tailor your Twitter approach, engage a loyal audience, and integrate community-driven techniques for tangible business growth. If you’re aiming to elevate your social media game—especially on Twitter—this episode delivers the actionable insights you need. Get ready for tips and examples that will help you transform your Twitter presence, cultivate authentic connections, and see measurable results for your brand.
Brands mentioned
Applebee’s
Content Marketing Institute (CMI)
People Report
Share Our Strength / No Kid Hungry
Community of Hope
Orange Effect Foundation
Sachi LA

Welcome to the podcast. I am Shane Barker. Your host of Shane Barker’s Marketing Madness Podcast, today’s episode is about how to create a winning Twitter content strategy. I have with me, Cathy McPhillips, an expert content strategist, marketer and VP of Marketing at CMI. She’s spoken at various global events on content marketing. We’ll discuss Cathy’s secret recipe in creating a strong and effective Twitter marketing strategy. Listen as she shares more details about her career journey and her role at Content Marketing Institute. It’s a valuable resource for everyone who wants to capitalize on Twitter marketing.
Let’s start off with Cathy back in the day. Let’s talk about little Cathy, right? Then we have older, extremely wise Cathy, right? So let’s talk about Cathy when you first started growing up. Like, did you actually grow up in Cleveland?

Cathy McPhillips
I did.

You did?

Cathy McPhillips
I left for an entire four years, went to college down in southern Ohio, moved back, met my husband, who lived six miles from where I grew up. So we don’t go too far. We don’t leave.

No, I mean, if you got a good spot, I mean, you know, if your husband’s only six miles away, I mean, why do you have to that little radius? That’s all you need, really, right?

Cathy McPhillips
I mean, all my siblings, we’re all everyone’s real close, well, mostly, but, yeah, we’re a tight knit bunch.

That’s awesome. So your family’s still really close today.

Cathy McPhillips
Yes, well, I have one sister in Colorado, one brother in Utah, but we’re trying to get them both to come back. My sister’s moving back pretty soon, but I’m one of six. My mom remarried, and my stepdad has five. So it’s fun holidays.

I was going to say, that’s Christmas and Thanksgiving—you’ve got to have a big house for that, last time I checked, yeah. So, tell us about it. So, you had, okay, I think an interesting fact is that there are 11 siblings in total. But, you know, some merged families—that always happens. What’s a fun fact about you, like growing up, that people would have no idea? Like, what would you say, “Okay, nobody knows this about Cathy, but I…,” whatever. I mean, other than your husband was six miles away, you had a pretty close-knit family. Is there any other cool fun fact that, if anybody was like, “They would never know that,” you can tell us, I guess?

Cathy McPhillips
I guess one story that I didn’t tell people for most of my life, but I started telling people in the past couple of years, is that I was in this really fortunate situation when I was in high school. Our high school was so big that there were four principals, and each was the principal of a certain house. One day, my house principal called me over the PA system. In the class, I was in, he said, “Cathy, come to the office,” which, I mean, that’s unheard of. I never got called to the office. So, everyone in the class was like, “Ooh, Cathy’s in trouble.” I went down there, and he talked to me for about 15 minutes. You know, he asked how life was, what I was doing next year—I was a senior—talked about my family, asked if I was working, what was going on. He knew a lot of that stuff, but then he said, “Look, let’s just go through this again.” I was like, “Okay.” We went through it, and he said, “Okay, thanks. Go back to class.” I left, thinking, “That was really weird, but alright.” Then about two weeks later, I got called back down to the office, and there was a man sitting there who was probably in his 70s at the time, with all the principals. They said, “Do you know why you’re here?” I said, “I have no idea.” Apparently, this gentleman and his wife, when they were in their 20s and 30s, tried forever to have children. They had one daughter, and before she was born, they started saving for her to go to college. She ended up passing away at a very young age. So, he approached the high school I went to—where he graduated from—and said they would like to pay for one female student to go to college. Each of the principals at our school interviewed two female high school seniors that they thought were deserving, and they picked me.

Jesus, goosebumps. Like, that’s crazy.

Cathy McPhillips
So, I was really, really fortunate. We stayed in touch for a long time. After I took my report cards to him, I took him to lunch whenever I would come home on break. He’d always say, “I don’t need your report card,” but I’d say, “I know, but you’re kind of part of this.” My mom would always say, “Go see him,” and I’d be like, “I know.” She was very good at making sure I spent time with him. Once she nudged me, I got in the habit of enjoying the time I spent with him. The last time I saw him, I had my three-month-old in a baby carrier and went to see him. I also wrote him notes. One day, I got a note returned from his lawyer saying that he had passed away. But he saw me through from 18 until my son was 10 years old. I knew him before he passed away. So, pretty cool story.

That is—oh my God—that’s not just a cool story. That’s awesome. I think good things happen to good people, and that’s one of those things. Especially coming into the principal’s office, you’re like, “I have no idea what is going on,” right? That’s not a place you, in theory, want to be, right? Unless somebody’s giving you a four-year paid scholarship and you’re going to impact someone’s life in such a positive way by doing something that awesome. Wow, that’s incredible. I have to tell you, out of all the interviews I’ve done, that’s a very personal moment for you. It’s awesome that you shared that. It’s really cool. I’m a very emotionally driven person. You tell me a story, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” I think I know where this is going. I literally have goosebumps. That’s really cool.

Cathy McPhillips
Yeah, and I said to myself, once that happened, “You know what? I’m going to do that for someone someday.” In reality, I have to get to my own point, so I’m like, “Okay, I won’t be able to do that fully.” But, you know, whenever I can, if I can help a student, help them get a job, look at their resume, or do something to help make their future better, it definitely had a lasting impact on me. So, I’m hopefully carrying out a legacy that he left, and I’m proud of that.

Yeah, yeah. That is so, so cool. Well, this is what you should do with your kids—surprise them and bring them into the principal’s office and say, “You know what, I talked to your dad, and we’re going to pay for your college.” And they’ll be like, “We had no idea, Mom, you’re the best.” And you’ll be like, “Yeah, you’re welcome, because we were.” But with that, you know what, we’re just going to pay this forward. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a really cool story. So, what college did you go to?

Cathy McPhillips
Ohio University, not Ohio State. Just to differentiate, yeah. So I would study journalism there, and it was a fun, fun place. I have a high school senior right now, and I have two kids, one two’s a college sophomore and one’s a high school senior, and neither of them are going, are going to OU, saddens me a little bit, but..

Yeah, so it’s crazy. My son is in his second year of college at Chico State, and it’s crazy to have kids in college. I mean, isn’t that surreal? For me, it’s still hard to believe. When I say it out loud, it doesn’t seem real. I don’t know. It’s crazy to me. Like, weren’t we just there? It feels like just a week ago, I feel like maybe we went to the same college and I saw you in the dorms or something. It’s just one of those things. When people tell me, or when I tell people that, they’re like, “Are you serious? You have a son in college?” I’m like, “That’s crazy to me.” I should probably give him a call this week now that he’s kind of top of mind. Well, cool. And you said you studied journalism, which makes total sense with your current position, right? So, you studied journalism—what was your goal? I mean, obviously, your goal wasn’t to go work for CMI, right? Because it wasn’t even around. So, what was your goal with journalism? What did you want to do?

Cathy McPhillips
Here’s another funny story. So, it was my junior year of high school, and in our AP English class, we had to write a paper on what we wanted to do when we got older. I didn’t know, I was 16, so I went to my teacher and said, “I don’t even know where I should start.” She said, “Well, what are your strengths?” I said, “Math and art.” And she said, “You can’t be good at both of those things. Go to the library and take a test.” So I did. I took this test, answered all these personality questions, strengths and weaknesses, and everything, and marketing came out. I was like, “Okay, so we’re looking at schools, and, oh, they have a great journalism program, and they have a bunch of different marketing paths.” They offered a business marketing degree with a journalism focus, and journalism felt like a better fit for me at the time. Yeah, but they’re still related. You know, journalism— I knew I didn’t want to work for a newspaper. I didn’t want to be behind the camera, in front of the camera, or behind it for that matter. Then I just really lucked out. I had a professor my freshman year, and we were working on a media planning class. She said we were going through a bunch of numbers, and I was doing some formulas. She said, “Who’s your advisor?” I told her who it was, and she said, “Go switch to me.” So I switched to her, and I still talk to her today. She’s amazing, but she helped me navigate my path into media planning because she had 30 years of experience at Kraft in a hands-on role. She wasn’t just a professor; I had some amazing professors who were just professors, but having that background was so helpful. I still talk to her at least once a year around Christmas, and she helped me navigate what I wanted to do with my journalism degree. When someone says, “I’m in media planning,” but my major was journalism, it seems disconnected, right? I’m like, “Well, it’s actually totally connected.” But until you’re in there, you don’t really see it. I can see how there could be some confusion.

So it’s funny. So you had, she actually worked at craft for 30 years. So she was a practitioner.

Cathy McPhillips
She did.

Oh, that’s awesome.

Cathy McPhillips
She was. So to have to bring that knowledge with the book and the curriculum, and having that, okay, this is actually what you’re going to use of this lesson. And here’s how it was. She was amazing.

What’s funny is, I’ve talked about this a little bit in the past. There was a local college here in Sacramento that wanted to hire me to be an instructor, and I’m not going to tell you the college because I’m going to say something that’s, not bad, but; The lady who came to me said, “Hey, a lot of our instructors are older instructors, and they’re teaching stuff they’ve never actually done, right?” So, that becomes an issue because, you know, you’re 60 years old and you don’t have an Instagram profile, and you’re talking about how to do Instagram marketing. Not saying that you can’t do it, but they were saying, “We need a practitioner.” So, what was interesting to me is I was going to go back and get my MBA, or my Master’s or whatever, but then all of a sudden, UCLA knocked on my door and said, “Hey, for us, you usually have to get grandfathered in, or you have to be a CMO of some crazy company like Adobe to get in, but because we wanted you to teach the influencer marketing and personal brand, we’re bringing you in.” I didn’t have to get my MBA. They did it because I was a practitioner—because I was in the space, actually physically doing it, which I thought was awesome. This other college, which was a lot smaller, said, “You have to have an MBA,” even though they wanted my experience. I had to have an MBA just so behind my name, I’d have an MBA, right? It’s that old school way of thinking, like, you want me because of my experience, but then you want me to go get an MBA just so it says I have one behind my name. I get it because that’s been the standard up until this point. But these other people have MBAs and have been teachers for 30 years, but they don’t have the real-world experience. So, it’s interesting seeing that. I’m kind of hoping that there’s more focus on real-world experience in the future, because I think, as you said, anybody can read a book and regurgitate what they just read, but it’s actually being able to say, “Okay, let me show you how I applied this at Kraft. Let me show you how we put this all together.” I think that’s 10 times more important, right? Actually being able to assess the situation, understand what you’re learning, and show the students, “Hey, this is how it’s applicable to real-world situations.”

Cathy McPhillips
I actually just had this discussion because, like, once a semester, I’m guest lecturing at Cleveland State, Kent State, and a bunch of places around here. I love it. I love it so much. I love seeing the students’ eyes open up when you say something like, “Oh my gosh, I could do that!” or “I enjoy doing that!”—just helping them a little bit. It’s a passion of mine, and I’ve taught them before. They asked me, “Do you have your MBA?” and I said, “No.” They were like, “Oh.” At this point, I’m 47, and I’m thinking, do I really want to go back and invest the money to get my MBA, to do this so I can make less money being a professor? It’s not about the money necessarily, but the money I’d have to put out to get my MBA and the time I’d invest to do that—it just doesn’t make sense. And not that I’m the most brilliant marketer in the world, but I’ve been working for 25 years.

Yeah, and that’s the thing that’s crazy to me. I’ve literally thought about going back to get my MBA, strictly just to tell my son I got my MBA. Like, it’s not even for financial reasons, not because I could make money. There’s nothing more to it than I could say, “Hey, I got my MBA,” right? And for my son to tell his son, you know? So it’s literally not an ego thing, but just to say that I did it. But there’s no value to it for me. My career doesn’t change if I go, other than, well, not even the university thing now, because UCLA came in and accepted me. So, at that point, I might get open arms from other universities if I were to apply. I would think, I guess we’ll see. Only time will tell. But the college thing was interesting to me. It was a very interesting transition because teaching students is just a lot different. You’re applying the stuff you learn, but it’s just a different deal. I mean, I would fly down to LA, and my class was on Tuesdays from 6:30 to 9:30, so it’s three hours of curriculum. You know, I’m a talker, right? But I’m like, man, three hours of curriculum is a long time. Then putting it all together was just interesting. The learning curve on it was pretty big. But like I said, I really enjoy it. Now, I took these last few quarters off to work on some projects, but I’m excited about going back for sure. It’s been a great opportunity. Cool. So, how did you actually get into the marketing space? I mean, other than it sounds like you had some great instructors, and you were doing the journalism thing, how did that catapult you? When you got out of college, how did you realize marketing was the way for you? Other than some assessment tests you took and stuff like that, when did you realize marketing was what you wanted to pursue as a career?

Cathy McPhillips
I really just loved it when I got to school. I loved the media planning classes. I even loved my copywriting class, which, you know, you think you wouldn’t, just because of my math brain, but I loved it. I think part of why I loved the copywriting class was my professor was so analytic about our work. If you followed the rubric, you got an A, and I was such a rule follower that I did it. But it was just so fascinating to use that side of my brain. I thought, “Okay, I really like all aspects of this.” When I graduated from OU, I moved back to Cleveland, and it took me almost a year to find a job. I worked at the mall just to make some money, and then I found a job at an ad agency in Cleveland called Stash Hour. The media department there was very small, and no one was going anywhere, so I knew I wasn’t going to get a job there, but they had an opening in production, just as a coordinator. I thought, “Okay, I’ll take it to get my foot in the door, and then hopefully, eventually, I’ll be able to move into the media department.” Once I was there, it was really eye-opening. I saw a lot of things I wasn’t exposed to in school. I was learning from the creative team. The production team knew me. They were dependent on me to do all these things. When I didn’t transfer into my media role, it was just so nice. The way media works with production and creative was amazing. I went to them as a media planner and said, “Okay, I’m booking this TV spot. I’m booking this print ad. Do you want the print ad horizontal or vertical? Do you want the commercial to be 15 seconds or 30 seconds?” The crazy thing was they said, “Oh my gosh, no one ever asks us this. They just say, ‘We bought 15 seconds. Make it work.’” So, having the experience in this department that I really didn’t love was great. It really was, but I just knew it wasn’t what I ultimately wanted to do. It was very, very good for me. I think it’s been great to try out different things at agencies. So, I worked at two agencies, and then I’ve been doing my own thing since ’99 until I met Joe.

So it sounds like you worked for a few agencies, so that’s where you kind of got some experience from it. And then you started your own agency, right? I mean, you had your own company up until…

Cathy McPhillips
From ’99 to ’12, I was doing my own thing. I was very fortunate that when I was at Wise Advertising in Cleveland, I had an amazing boss who ended up moving to LA and working at Sachi LA. He’s actually still there. One of my old clients, who was one of my biggest accounts I worked on at the time, was Applebee’s International, and he was in Kansas City. So, right as I was leaving, he was leaving, and he said, “You know, I called him one day and I said, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know I’m quitting. I’m quitting. I’m going to stay home for a little bit and do my own thing.’” I had a newborn at that time, or a one-year-old. He said, “Can you wait two weeks? I’m actually quitting.” I said, “No, because I already made up my mind.” So, I said, but before I do, I went to him first. I said, “Before I go and tell my boss I work with 20-year-olds when… and so it’s going to travel fast, I want you to find out from me before you hear it from somebody else.” I was one of those 20-something-year-old women. Anyway, so he started working for an agency for a restaurant group in Oklahoma City and said, “Would you do a lot of my media from home? I’d rather have you in Cleveland doing it from home than having someone in Oklahoma City who I don’t know.” I said, “Sure.” So that started something small, just so I could do my mom thing for a little bit and still have some hours and, you know, keep my brain in the industry. Slowly but surely, a few people were reaching out to me, saying, “Hey, I loved your work when you were at Wise. Are you looking for some business?” And it was nice. I look back and I don’t know how I did it, how I was working the hours I was working with little kids, but somehow I survived. It was hard—lots of hard days, lots of late nights, early mornings—but, yeah, I loved it. I think what I liked most about it was, aside from the relationships I had and how they understood what I was trying to do, why I was home, I kind of taught myself a lot of things that I wouldn’t have learned in roles that I was in otherwise. I read things every day, probably way too much. So when social came along, I taught myself how to do it. When digital came along, I learned how to do analytics. You know, just things like that that, if I had just been in a role for a company or agency, I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunities, or may not have pushed myself as much to go look for them or find them.

Yeah, so it sounds interesting. It sounds like, well, first of all, you put yourself in a position to be able to find a lot of opportunities—lots of opportunities. You treat people right, you do good things, and then it naturally comes your way. And you’re always a learner, right? You’re always thinking, “What’s next?” I think that’s what I love about the digital space is that there’s always something to learn. I always try to learn just enough to be dangerous, and then I go find somebody that’s better at it than me, right? So I can hire them. That’s always my goal—just so I know the premise of how things need to be handled. I get my hands dirty most of the time in the beginning, and then hopefully, I have somebody that can take it off my hands. So, then you end up meeting Joe, right? What year was that? You said 1999 to 2012? I met him in 2012. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so the last seven years. How did that come about?

Cathy McPhillips
It was kind of like a perfect storm. He was looking for someone to head up marketing. At the time, he and Pam who was running operations, were kind of tag-teaming the marketing part of it. He also had, at one point, a heating and cooling arm of CMI. I’m not sure if you know that, but they were doing some content creation for the HVAC industry. Companies could call them and say, “We’ll use some of your blog posts, so we don’t need to write them,” among other things. That’s me making it sound small, but it was actually a pretty cool venture. My brother-in-law had a heating and cooling company in Cleveland, and I had been tweeting with Joe. Then something else, I think, came up in a LinkedIn search—so, three things. He asked my brother-in-law if he knew anyone in Cleveland, and he said, “Well, my sister-in-law, but she has her own thing, but maybe she can help you out in the meantime.” I was tweeting him, and I came up in a search on LinkedIn. He said, “Alright, maybe I should call her.” So, we ended up meeting for breakfast, and he kind of went through what the job description was. At that point, I had 40 hours, I was full with a bunch of clients, and my dad was at breakfast. I said, “Okay, this actually sounds really interesting. I can give you 20 hours. That’s the best I can do right now.” He said, “Okay, I’ll have you full time in six months.” I was like, locked down. “I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but I really am happy with what I’m doing right now.” Four months later, I went full time.

So he was right, Joe, for the win. There we go. That’s what happens, I guess. I love that you’re like, “I was already working 40 hours,” and then you’re like, “I can give you 20 hours.” You’re like, “Okay, so I’ll be at 60 hours.” You sound like myself. It’s one of those, like, “No, there’s more room,” and your wife’s like, “There’s no more room.” You’re like, “No, there is some room. Watch, I’ll make some room.” And she’s like, “We’ll find some.” Yeah, that’s probably the reason why you’re losing your hair, Shane, because there’s not a lot of room left. Awesome. So, and then obviously, that’s been the last seven years. And obviously, we all know Content Marketing Institute, what they’ve done, and what you guys have put together. It’s a phenomenal program, and the books that Joe’s put together and all that kind of stuff. I know you just recently went to the ContentTech Summit in San Diego. How did you like that summit? I haven’t been out there yet, but I heard good things about it. How was it? Obviously, San Diego is a fun place to visit as well, but…

Cathy McPhillips
Right, so this is a CMI event. I don’t know if you knew that, but… Did not know that. So, in previous years, we had the Intelligent Content Conference, which was one of our events, and we had that in Las Vegas. We did San Francisco for a few years, then moved it to Las Vegas for a couple more years. This year, we decided to pivot a little bit and get away from the whole idea of intelligent content and focus more on content, technology, and strategy. We thought that was a sweeter spot for marketers than the intelligent content side, which took a lot of heavy content strategy and involved a lot of things marketers really aren’t, and shouldn’t be, involved in. They might want to know about it, but do you really want to invest all this money in things you should know about but can’t implement? So, we know technology is something they can handle, and strategy is something they can do. So ContentTech was born in San Diego. I have to tell you, San Diego versus Las Vegas, for me, was such a better experience. I mean, the sun was shining, pretty much guaranteed beautiful weather. We love Vegas, but San Diego, I really liked. It was a good event. We had a lot of great speakers—about 40 speakers, 400 people. So, it was a much smaller version of Content Marketing World. The thing I like about ContentTech the best is that, in Content Marketing World, we covered the gamut: 28 tracks, I think, this year of content marketing, from social to ROI to sales, demand gen, etc. ContentTech is really focused on everything except content creation—what you do before you create content, figure out what you should be writing about, and then what you do with it afterward, from a distribution, amplification, and analytics standpoint. It’s not really focused on writing per se, just everything else. I thought it was really fun. I learned so much. There are so many smart speakers in the industry, like Andy Crestodina and Chris Penn. They blew my mind. Of anybody there, those two are just… they’re so smart. I’m in the analytics mode right now, so I think that was part of it, yeah. But it was pretty cool.

Yeah, Andy is… we’ve had Andy on the podcast. And Chris is one of those guys you talk about analytics. I mean, his last name should just be “analytics” with what he puts together. He’s next level. I’ll watch his videos, and I go, “God, I wish I was smart.” I’m like, maybe one day… maybe just 1/10 of what Chris is. That’d be awesome. I’ll take it. If you can hear me, dear Lord, this is my one request for Christmas, or Santa Claus, or whoever can bring that this year. Awesome. So, obviously, you guys have been putting on a lot of events, and that’s cool. You guys have a lot of… I mean, that’s what I love about events. I’ve spoken at quite a few events, and I love, well, first I like speaking, but what I really enjoy is going to listen to everybody else, writing, pulling those little nuggets from the other presenters that I’ve known for a long time. It’s like, “Oh, I forgot about that.” Or, “Oh, that’s something new.” That’s my favorite part. I was just in St. Louis for MDMC, which is the big conference they have in the Midwest, and I spoke there. But I got there… wasn’t speaking till Thursday. I got there on Monday because I wanted to go to the whole conference and check it out, and then, obviously, as much barbecue as I physically possibly could, which I did push out, by the way. I saw the arch and all that kind of fun stuff. But yeah, it was fun. I definitely enjoy that. You leave with all these notes. You’re like, “Man, there’s so much of this basic stuff that I totally forgot about, and some new stuff that I have to implement.” Then I gotta go back to my team, and my whole team’s like, “Oh God, here we go. It’s gonna be one week of Shane’s new bright ideas on everything we have to implement in the next week.”

Cathy McPhillips
Well, especially when you’re doing things like changing your podcast, or doing something where you’re like, oh my gosh, I know this stuff. It works. What I was doing on my blog, but now I’m doing a whole new thing. I got to start, kind of start over a little bit.

Yeah, it is one of those things you have to… for me, I look at it and go, “Okay, I can’t go too crazy. I have to take little pieces of this. What can I implement that’s not too crazy?” Right? Because my poor team— I have a 30-something team, they’re all remote, so I have a good-sized team. But they know when I come back from these conferences, they’re like… one of my main guys, he braces himself. He’s like, “Alright, so what did you learn? What do we have to do differently? What do we have to add?” And I go, “No, it’s not too bad. It’s only 10 pages of notes, and it’ll be fine.” And then, like, three hours later, he’s like, “I don’t even know why I partnered with you at this point. You just want to do all this new stuff. All fun stuff, though, and we all get it done, so it’s all good.” But, right? So, what would be, like… I mean, this is kind of a hard question… what is your favorite social media platform for marketing? Like, is there a platform that you guys use, or that you use with your clients, or whatever, where you go, “This is something I can’t live without”? Is there one platform that you can think of and go, “This is it. That’s the one”?

Cathy McPhillips
I love Twitter. I feel like a lot of people don’t, but I really do for business, I feel like I like Twitter the best, LinkedIn is growing on me again. Personally, I love Instagram. But from a business standpoint, I feel like Twitter and LinkedIn are better for us.

Yeah, and it’s funny, I’m a fan of Twitter as well. I probably haven’t been as responsive over the last year as I have in the past, but I do enjoy it. I spent a lot of time and resources into Twitter, and I’ve always really enjoyed it. I just haven’t been doing it as much as I think I would like to. I’m sure my numbers are down in regards to engagement and stuff, but I do enjoy Twitter. I think it’s a little crazy out there, but I kind of enjoy that. When you filter things out, you can have some great conversations, because that’s where everybody’s talking, right? It’s that ongoing, fast conversation where you can find out a lot of cool stuff. I think, like, you know, we used to use a lot of the lists, which I think were underused by a lot of people. When I would go to conferences, I would add them on Twitter, on these lists, and then, you know, we could continue to engage with them, so they would remember who you were. There were these little touch points, which I thought was kind of cool. So, I’m a fan of Twitter as well. It’s, you know, but like anything else, you just have to figure out where you’re going to spend your time. There are so many platforms now—TikTok, and this and that—and it gets to a point where you’re like, “I just have to control a few of these things.” Build a nice little audience here, get them to the website somehow, get them to the conference, let them know when I’m speaking, when my books are coming out, when the podcast is coming out, and just drive that traffic. Always interesting. So, cool. So, like, what do you think when it comes to, so you’re talking about, obviously, Twitter, and then LinkedIn is starting to grow on you? What do you think the change has been in LinkedIn? Why is it starting to grow on you? I mean, I can tell you what I think, and it’s probably something that’s happened in the last few years, but why is LinkedIn starting to grow on you? Is that something you guys use at CMI a lot, or just for you as an individual?

Cathy McPhillips
I think as a business, you know, for CMI and for our event, I really love LinkedIn. If I’m trying to target somebody with a paid message, there’s nothing better than LinkedIn. I mean, I can target down to the company, which is pretty phenomenal. Yeah, it’s expensive, but you get what you pay for. I think that’s really cool. I’m running tons of tests right now with various companies—job titles, geography, and all these different things. I can go in there every few days, optimize it, test different ads, and it’s been really good for us. People keep telling me, “All I see is your ads.” I’m like, “Yes, don’t click. Don’t click on the show. If you don’t hear something, don’t click.” That’s right. But it’s been really good for us. They keep changing groups. We’ve got a pretty robust 50,000-ish folks in our LinkedIn group, and it’s been great. I couldn’t moderate the discussions at first. You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t do that. They do a message of their madness. It’s a little frustrating at first as a moderator, even though I’m not the one that does it day to day. Donna Wagner from our team does that, but she’ll call me, saying, “Oh my gosh, this group—they keep changing things, and there’s so much spam.” But we changed our group in the past 18 months. If you post a message, just a link to your website or a blog or anything as a link—actually, anything that doesn’t engage conversation—we delete your posts. So our entire group is all questions or conversations. It’s amazing. We’re one of the few groups where people actually come back and say, “Thank you.” It’s a lot of work. Mo invests a lot of time every single day going in there and deleting stuff, and slowly, LinkedIn is starting to recognize what we’re accepting and what we’re not accepting. They’re doing it for us, which is really nice. It’s cut down a lot. We’ve had some really good discussions in there. From my standpoint of looking at how to market to our audience, our editorial team is looking at what discussions are happening in there. Our programming team for the event is looking at what names are coming up a lot. So things like that. It’s not analytics, it’s not digging into GA or Adobe or anything like that, but those anecdotal conversations are really valuable. Mo will say, “Oh my gosh, this post—somebody asked a question on this, and it blew up. It’s all about ROI. Can we cover this on the blog, or this person answering everyone’s questions should be speaking at our event?” It’s really good for us. Social listening is just so important. As much as we have all this data, listening to things socially is really important for us.

It’s a great place. Yeah, it doesn’t get any better than that. I’ve had fitness influencers where we’ve created Facebook groups and stuff like that. It’s funny— a lot of the potential ebooks or anything we would create was based on what people were talking about in the group. You’d find out what was hot and what people wanted to know about, and then you’d create content around that. It sounds like you guys do the same thing. I mean, you have this group of people that are talking about stuff, and naturally, they’re going to give you insight. You see what people are talking about and what they’re not talking about. Or, I didn’t think about the other side of it: Who’s answering the questions and seems to know what they’re talking about? We should have them come speak. I just need to be in your forum more and answer more questions, which is good to know until…

Cathy McPhillips
And I’d be remiss. Mo would not be happy if I didn’t mention that we started a Slack group also. Ah, so she’s been and I don’t use Slack. I haven’t really gotten into it yet, because, partly because she does such a good job of doing it that I don’t have to, but a lot of those same conversations are going are starting over there, for those folks who aren’t really interested in the LinkedIn group.

Yeah, I’ve belonged to quite a few Slack groups, and once again, they can either be super phenomenal with great information or sometimes, you know, it just depends on how they’re developed and who’s moderating or putting it on. But I do have two Slack groups that are, like, over the top. Not that I couldn’t live without them, but they’re just awesome. Very engaging people. Everybody’s helping everybody, and you can promote content and do all kinds of stuff. Everybody kind of knows where they’re supposed to promote things and do stuff, so if done correctly, Slack groups like that can be absolutely phenomenal. But it takes a good moderator and someone who knows how to corral all the cats, right? Get everybody in position, do this, don’t do that. Once you get the community listening and actually doing what you say, it becomes easier. But in the beginning, it’s definitely more like corralling drunk cats. I don’t know if cats get drunk, but I just picture these cats, and if they did, I think that’s what it would be like. Awesome. So, you’re obviously a huge fan of Twitter. Do you have a secret recipe for creating content for Twitter, or what have you learned over the years? Because obviously, you enjoy it. Do you use it more for personal, business, or both? What’s your strategy there?

Cathy McPhillips
Pretty much only business, and we all have personal conversations with people I know, mostly through Content Marketing World or through CMI. But I think, you know, back in 2013, before the first event I attended for CMI, we started a Twitter chat 10 weeks prior to the event just to see. It was basically more of a promotional tool. I told Joey, “Let’s try it for 10 weeks. If it flops, we’ll stop it after the event, after two and a half months.” At the event, people were coming up to me asking, “What’s next week’s topic?” I’m like, “Oh, okay, I guess we’re going to keep doing this.” And it’s still going. We’re four, five, six years in, and it’s amazing. A lot of people have turned over a little bit, but some people have been there from the very beginning. Every week, we have these discussions with special guests and special topics. But more often than not, like next week, we’re actually having just a community chat, and we’re just going to see how it goes. I say our community carries the chat. The guest is great, and the topic is great, but ultimately, it’s the hundreds of people who show up every single week, talking to each other, sharing success stories, or asking, “Have you tried this?” Or, “Oh my gosh, I tried this new tool, have you looked into it? It’s free with a two-week trial,” or whatever the case may be. Or just to have a conversation, because a lot of us work from home, so it’s really nice to talk to a human every now and then, even if we’re doing it online. But that’s been really good for us. One of the things we’ve done really well—though we’ve done a lot of crummy things too—is we’ve carried that #CMWorld hashtag not only through our Twitter chats and events but also every single day, all year long. So the community uses it in our Tuesday noon Eastern Twitter chat, quick plug for our event, and everything in between. It’s a blog post, someone asking a question about something, and it just has a life of its own. It’s been really good for us. People might see it on Tuesday or see it on a random blog post and say, “Oh, what’s this hashtag?” and then they find out about it. So it’s not like we only have our four days together in Cleveland every year. We stay in touch, hopefully not 24 hours a day, but every single day throughout the year, whenever we want to reach out to one another. So it’s grown into something pretty spectacular.

Yeah, that’s cool. That’s kind of like the Slack groups I’ve seen. Once you build something like that, what’s awesome is, in the beginning, I’ve seen, like, we have some that were part of the beginning. You see the moderators having to talk a lot, but then you get to a point where everybody’s just talking, right? That’s what’s awesome about it. Once it takes on its own life, it sounds like that’s what the Twitter chats have done. Like, obviously, the guests are great, but at the end of the day, it’s the 1,500 people that are there actually having the conversation and interacting back and forth where the magic really happens, right? That’s where I think the real value is. You have that interaction where people look forward to, as you said, people ask you at conferences, “Hey, what are we talking about next week?” I think it’s kind of interesting to see. I remember when I first heard about Twitter chats, I was like, “God, I don’t know if I really get it.” Then all of a sudden, I jump in one, or I’m a guest of one, and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Wow. Okay, I get it.” It’s like this swarm of bees that come in and have this great conversation, and then all of a sudden, an hour later, they’re gone. It’s like, “Wow, that was kind of crazy.” It’s like a Care Bear Stare, right? You’ll remember. So, that’s awesome.

Cathy McPhillips
One thing, you know, when I started, when we have webinars, our webinars’ hashtag is #CMI. We were talking about whether we should add a year on top of it, like #CMWorld2013, 2014, 2015. I’m like, “No, keep everything the same,” because CMI has different meanings. At least #CMWorld, we pretty much own that hashtag. Every now and then, you’ll see it come up for something random, but apparently, #CMI also means “Can’t Make It.” So I was following it on TweetChat or TweetBack, and it was like, “Oh, okay.” So, you know, that’s one funny thing about hashtags—you just need to figure out, does it mean anything else? So, we’ve kind of just stuck with everything across the board, even though our webinars don’t really revolve around our event. They revolve around our community, and that’s what’s most important to us.

Yeah, how big is your guys’ team?

Cathy McPhillips
There are 22 of us.

Okay, because I was… it’s just interesting, because I’m always curious to see the impact that a team makes and how many people are behind it. Sometimes, I’m shocked, or sometimes I think, “Oh, I thought you had more people.” Because you guys, I think, as an example, like CMI, have a huge footprint. I mean, a huge footprint. You’re putting on events, doing a lot of things, and obviously Joe’s books and stuff like that. I think you guys have made a huge impact, especially in the content space, but I think in other spaces as well. It’s just interesting. I’m just kind of curious about how many people are on the team.

Unknown
Well, that doesn’t include all our blog contributors or our event team. We have lots of people who help us, but our core group is 22 right now. And we’re virtual, and people don’t know that. Like, “Wait, you’re working from home?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” We had Joe’s upstairs conference table for a little while, but, you know, we’re all remote workers. We range from Rochester to LA. We have some team members in Boston, and we have people everywhere in between. Half the team is here in Cleveland, but we’re pretty spread out as well.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I know the same with my team. I had a company, back in the day, many moons ago, that had 130 people, and we were all in one building. That was crazy. I told myself I would never do that again. I was like, I do not want 130 people in the same building with me being in charge of all that. So now, my whole team is all over the world. I like that 24-hour cycle, where things need to get done. I have people who wake up, get it done, and when I hand it to a client, they’re like, “I don’t know how you got that done when you were supposed to be sleeping.” I’m like, “I don’t know. It’s a secret. I can’t tell you.” We just get stuff done. Just know that we’re on top of it. So, what have you seen, in regards to Twitter, that gets the highest engagement? Obviously, you guys have done a lot of different things. I mean, with Instagram, it’s like, “Hey, put up a picture, get some engagement.” The same thing on Facebook, right? The video thing seems to do really well. Have you seen anything on Twitter that you’re like, “Oh, that seemed to do really well”? I know it constantly changes because of algorithms and stuff like that, but has there been anything that has historically done really well for you guys in terms of engagement on Twitter?

Cathy McPhillips
Yeah, Mo’s done a really good job of playing around with a bunch of different things. She’ll take one blog post and run it with just text and the link. She’ll do one with the Twitter card. She’ll do one with a video corresponding to it, and she’ll upload the raw video. She’s tried all of it, and the picture does the best. Video is doing well, but just text by itself, she’s kind of played around with it, and that’s just not the best for her. What we’ve noticed is, like with our speakers and other things that we’re doing, if our editorial director is sending out an email to a blog contributor saying the post is running tomorrow, here’s some pre-written tweets, here’s an image you can use, here’s the link you can use so we can track it back to you—here’s this, this, and this. We do that with our Content Marketing World speakers as well. Here’s a link to your session, here’s your personalized discount code. We’re handing a nice packet of information to our contributors and helpers. We need their help, and if we’re asking for help, we better prepare them with something. We don’t want them to have to spend too much time working. We want them to help, not work too hard to help us. So we try to make it as neat and as packaged as possible. They can edit it, they can change it to their heart’s content, but if they can’t, we have it ready for them. I think that’s been really good from the amplification and distribution standpoint—using the resources we already have. That’s been really beneficial for us.

And make it a no-brainer, right? I mean, that’s the thing. If you want people to help you and support what you’ve got going on, you need to give them the tools. You need to give them the stuff. We realized that back in the day when we would have expert roundups or whatever we would do. My God, nobody seems to be sharing it. It’s like, well, then when we started sending them banners that were already made, and we’d say, “Do this, put this here, put this there,” then we saw, obviously, a higher increase in the amount of people doing that. Because it’s a no-brainer. I can either click this, copy this, tweak this a little bit. We already have a banner made, so it’s easy. They don’t necessarily want to have to tap into their resources because they’re already busy with their own stuff. So, if you make it easy, right?

Cathy McPhillips
I think I’ve also seen that they’d rather have us do that than have us, you know, do a roundup post on Content Marketing World where there are 15 speakers, and we pull a quote or something from them. They’d rather have us send them an email saying, “You’re in this post, and here’s some information,” versus us tagging all of them on LinkedIn. We’re trying to avoid that because, you know, that’s personal. It’s like, “My feed is already busy enough. I don’t need someone tagging me in some posts, even if it’s completely relevant and I’m in it.” But being considerate goes a long way. I think us giving them the tools is a lot easier than us blasting them and making them think, “Why did you do that?”

Yeah, I might be guilty of that. Potentially, I’m not going to plead fully guilty.

Cathy McPhillips
But like, one person or two people, I think is okay. But when you’re doing, like, 50 at one time, that’s my thing. When it gets a little bit…

Yeah, it gets a little…

Cathy McPhillips
But don’t do that.

I’ll try not to. I’ll tell the team, “Okay, we’ve got to quit. This is code red.” I knew we were doing something wrong this week, and now I’ve figured it out. That’s awesome. So, let’s talk about content marketing techniques. Is there anything you’ve seen, let’s say, in 2019 or 2020, something cool that’s come along that you’re like, “If you’re a content marketer or you’re a brand, this is something you should really take a look at.” Is there anything new and riveting that you’ve seen over the last year or two? Or is it all kind of like, “Hey, it’s all about putting out great content and the amplification and distribution of it?”

Cathy McPhillips
I think a couple of things. One, I’m really big on podcasts right now. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I go for a walk every day, listen to some podcasts, and I just walk down the street laughing. Right now, I’m listening to Conan O’Brien’s podcast, which is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. So I listen to a lot of marketing ones as well. Oh my gosh, it’s hysterical. I love audio because we can listen to it in so many different ways, whether we’re cooking, working, walking, running, or whatever we’re doing, even sitting in our car. It’s something we can do alongside so many other things. I think it’s really great, and there are some really solid podcasts coming out. But with that said, with so many coming out, there’s probably a lot of junk out there too. How do you stand out? How can you differentiate? I think that’s what I was going to say. My second point is, if you aren’t producing something amazing every single day, then stop publishing every day. Drop it to once a week, or drop something that has value. I think that’s what we’re going to see this year and next year. We should have already seen it, actually. People who are just pushing out content for content’s sake aren’t going to be around much longer. There’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to differentiate yourself. I think changing the name of your podcast is brilliant because it stays true to what it is. If you know what it is, you know what it is. It’s different. It’s not just a content term. It’s something bigger. It’s you as a person, and people identify with you, rather than just some generic content term. Making those connections is key.

Yeah, and for us, it really was about that. I like content that converts, but I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into just talking about content because a lot of the podcasts, like, you know, in the beginning, I’ll be honest, my team was like, “Hey, listen, I listened to the whole hour podcast, and there are only a few tips that I can get from a marketing perspective.” And I said, “Yeah, but I want a podcast where I’m talking to people as humans. I want to get to know the individual. Give me your background, your family, like, let’s talk about you.” I mean, podcasts are hard to just give, like, “Here are 50 tips you need to write down and go do.” It’s more about getting some good stuff in the middle of it. That’s why I thought, “You know what? I don’t want it to be just about that.” I want it to be real because I’m a little bit of a smart aleck, and I like to have some fun. I mean, I’ve had conversations about meth with someone—just joking around about it—not doing meth, but somehow we ended up talking about it. So, there are these weird little conversations that you listen to, and you’re like, “How did you even get on this topic?” I don’t know. It has nothing to do with content. Last time I checked, I don’t think meth and content go together, at least not that I know of. But anyway, I like to have these weird conversations, and I get a lot of emails afterward, people saying, “God, that was a great interview, thank you so much.” For me, it’s like, “Oh, okay, it’s because I try not to be just, ‘Oh, let’s talk about content.’” It’s not like, “Oh, yay, tell me about your content.” That’s just not exciting at all. I want something you actually want to listen to, enjoy listening to, and say, “Oh, that was kind of fun, and I got a few good things out of it.” I don’t know, I try to do things a little differently, and hopefully, that will make us win in the end. I guess we’ll find out here soon, right?

Cathy McPhillips
A couple of years ago, we were having a bit of a low in our webinar attendance, and we were doing a lot of the same things we’d done years prior, when it was really doing well. One of the topics was just okay, and we couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Our webinar team called and asked, “What can we do differently?” I said, “If you tell them who the guest is, it’ll make all the difference.” I forget who it was, but if you tell them it’s Jay Baer, it doesn’t matter what the topic is, people are going to show up. Focus on the person, not just the topic. We could all talk about these topics, good or bad, but if you tell them the face behind it, the name behind it, that’s what people care about. If Jay Baer is talking about something, you’re going to listen. It’s going to be good, funny, entertaining, or something. You may not learn something absolutely brilliant every single time, but you’ll learn something, and he’ll keep you engaged and entertained.

And his suits were good, just, you know, he’s going to come out flashy, and you’re like, “Man, what’s on there?” Good old, shout out to Jay. That guy. I love that guy. He’s the best. He is. He’s a cool cat, for sure. So, rumor has it that you might be working on a book. Is this true? Or is it just in my head? Oh, don’t be modest with me, damn it. Tell us about your book. I know you’ve got something going on. You’re a go-getter, I know. This isn’t just a little idea you thought of. You’ve got a few notes on it. You don’t need to give us all the details, but what’s the premise?

Cathy McPhillips
Well, I don’t know. I really, honestly don’t know. I’ve been wanting to do this forever. I put it on my “50 before 50” list, thinking, “Before I turn 50, obviously.” And I know, right? So I need at least a topic by then. I talked to Joe Pulizzi about writing a book with him, and he laughed at me, so that’s not going to happen. He said, “Cathy, I kind of have imposter syndrome.” I’m like, “What would I write about? Would people really care about something I could write with expertise?” I don’t know, something.

It’s hard. I’m telling you, and I’ve talked about this with most of my guests. You know, I’ve talked about doing a book, and honestly, if I had a dollar for every time I talked about writing a book, I could just retire. I’d have at least $1,000, maybe $2,000, who knows? I talk about my book so much, and that’s why I was giving you a hard time about it, because I can reflect on me not writing my book. I’ve talked about it, but the problem is, I think, and this happens with clients too, I overthink it. It’s like, “Hey, you have expertise. You can write something. You’ll probably get some sales, and you’ve done this, and you know the stuff that will drive it.” But it’s just, I don’t know. It’s finalizing something because you want it to have an impact. I don’t know, it is a little difficult. I talked to Andy Crestodina, and he was like, “Next time I talk to you, Shane, you’re going to have to tell me you’ve got chapter one or two.” And I just avoided him. Now, I can’t talk to Andy. So if Andy’s listening to this, that interview was the last time I’ll ever talk to Andy Crestodina. Unfortunately, because he’s an awesome guy, but I’m going to have to avoid him like an ex-girlfriend, or come up with some chapters and look him in the eye like a grown man and say, “Hey, we’re good. I did what I told you I was going to do.” And then, you know, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Now we’re good. There you go.

Cathy McPhillips
We’re good. We should write a book together and just make everyone happy.

There we go. I mean, if we get two procrastinators together, some magic could happen. Either that, or we’re just going to look at each other and go, “I don’t know. What do you want to write?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” It’s funny because the premise of putting stuff together isn’t difficult. I’m no cam. I’m not a bad writer. You’re a journalist. I have writers on my team. It really should be like, “Hey, this is what we need to do,” and I can come up with whatever it is. But I probably think about it too much. At this point, the listeners are probably tired of hearing me talk about this book I’m not going to write. How about this? I promise I’ll write the book before I die. The cool part is, if I die, nobody can give me a hard time about whether the book came out or not, right? A little sick and twisted on a Monday, but I figured I’d throw that out there. Alright, I know, a lot of information for you guys. So, let’s move on to something a little lighter than death, hashtags, and books. You do a lot of stuff with nonprofits. I saw some of the organizations you’ve been a part of. Tell me a little bit about that. Tell us about the personal side of Cathy.

Cathy McPhillips
So, one of the things I’ve been involved in is the nonprofit space. I was in the restaurant marketing industry for a number of years, and I was at an event in Dallas with a company called People Report. It was a service sector event, and Billy Shore, who founded Share Our Strength (now branded as No Kid Hungry), was up on stage talking about his organization. I just sat there in awe about what he was doing. Are you familiar with them at all? Billy and his sister went on a mission trip to a third world country, and while they were there, they were shocked by the hunger they saw. This is the abbreviated version of the story, but when they came back, they decided they wanted to solve world hunger. That’s a massive goal, so they narrowed it down to hunger in the United States, focusing on children. They kept refining it until they realized they could make the most impact by focusing on schoolchildren. They figured they could get access to the systems in place, and that’s where their strength lies—helping kids in school. They focused on school breakfast programs, as studies show that if you eat breakfast before school, you perform better. They also created backpack programs for weekends and snow days, and summer meal programs. They’ve done so much, it’s amazing. I worked with them on social media for a number of years and created the Social Council, which consisted of active social media users who had large followings. This group helped us activate campaigns like Giving Tuesday. The Social Council was instrumental in making sure our social media efforts were as effective as possible. I transitioned out of my role with Share Our Strength but am still involved with the Social Council. Another nonprofit I’m involved with is called Community of Hope. One of my friends, Amber, started this organization in Cleveland. They help young adults who age out of foster care get on their feet. Amber’s nonprofit has a unique model where each young adult is paired with six or seven adults, and these adults meet with the young adult once a week for an entire year. It’s not about giving them handouts; it’s about helping them build connections and get the resources they need. It’s been successful, and no one has ended up homeless or incarcerated. Everyone is doing well, even though there are occasional hiccups along the way. I’m on the board of this organization and will be seeing Amber tomorrow. Lastly, Joe Pulizzi and his wife Pam started the Orange Effect Foundation, which helps children with autism gain access to therapy and devices they might not be able to afford otherwise. Their son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months, and because they were able to provide him with early intervention, he’s now a thriving high school student and class leader. He’s active in many things, thanks to the help he received as a child. I’m also on the board of the Orange Effect Foundation. It’s been a lot of time and work, but it’s been totally worth it.

That’s awesome. It’s funny that you talk about foster kids. My dad was a counselor and also president of the Teachers Association. He’s retired now, but he still does similar work through the court system. They appoint him, though I can’t remember the specific term, but he gets assigned a foster child every year. He’ll take them to baseball games, help them with different things, just spending time with them. He’s really enjoyed this part of his retirement because before, he was always very interactive with kids and proactive about helping people in the foster system. Once you reach a certain age, though, you kind of drop off the radar. People don’t really care, and you’re not getting the same type of support that younger kids do. At a certain point, it’s like, “Hey, you’re on your own now.” But that doesn’t mean you’re ready. There’s still a lot of support needed at that stage.

Cathy McPhillips
So it’s interesting. And these kids are all like, when you turn 18, this County’s like, Okay, we’re done. You’re done.

Yeah, my responsibility is done, which is a hard one because a lot of them aren’t ready at that point. I mean, I wasn’t ready at 18, and I had a great family. I still needed some support, if you know what I mean. Alright, so this is the big question. This is the one that floors people usually. I think you’re going to be ready for it. So if there was one hashtag that describes you best — I know you’re a big hashtag user, maybe a potential hashtag abuser — but you tell me, what would the hashtag be for Cathy? What would be the one that describes you best? I would say maybe #BigGiver, but I don’t know. I’m not here to push either way.

Cathy McPhillips
Well, I wouldn’t say that because I’m not a good self-promoter. I’m much better at pointing to other things besides myself. So I wouldn’t make it about me. I’d probably say #CMWorld, because that’s kind of my world right now. There we go. And then I try to stay off social. I like Instagram a lot, but yeah, I’ve kind of been down on Facebook a little bit. I don’t really tweet personal stuff. So really, I guess I would say #CMWorld is my answer.

Fine, that’s your final answer. You don’t have to call anybody or anything? That’s good, that’s good. I feel like it’s a strong answer. Another thing is, so I went to go add you on Instagram, and then I saw your account is private. What’s up with that? I mean, can the whole world not know about what’s going on in Cathy’s life, or are you trying to keep things under wraps? What’s the deal?

Cathy McPhillips
I would say two things. One, my kids are on there. And two, I had a bad situation.

Ah, there we go. That’s it. Bad situation. Pretty simple reason to go private, yeah, that’s, that’s, I’m trying to be smart, and you’re like, No, I had a real world situation. Shane, like, wow, jackass.

Cathy McPhillips
Thanks, Shane, thanks for bringing that up.

Thanks for bringing it up on the podcast. This is what it looks like. We have to edit out the last part again from Shane’s podcast. It’s either talking about meth or situations that are uncomfortable. Way to go. Shane, another podcast.

Cathy McPhillips
It’s all good. I’m over it.

Good, good, good, good. Well, I’m glad you, glad you made it through. Cathy, you’ve been a doll. This was fun.

Cathy McPhillips
This was super fun.

Hour of action. Nothing but a good time. I really, really thank you for being on the podcast today.

Cathy McPhillips
Thank you. This was fun.

Alright we’ll talk soon.