Did you know that before Social Media Examiner was launched, Michael Stelzner was known as THE white paper guy? What’s a white paper you ask? In the 138th edition of The Solopreneur Hour, Michael joins us to explain what a white paper is and what it does, and he shares how that white paper industry expertise led to his interest in social media and the eventual launch and success of Social Media Examiner.

In this episode, we talk about the necessity of building relationships, how to do it with people you admire and fledgling talent you come across, and how he runs a thriving enterprise with a dedicated staff, many of whom are volunteers.

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Since his early days, Michael Stelzner has been an entrepreneur. Growing up as a young boy in the Midwest, he and his brother would dig up nightcrawlers and sell them to fishermen the next morning. For those of you non-fishing folk, nightcrawlers are big worms fishermen used as bait.

Being just a kid, his nightcrawler interested wained so he picked up a paper route. When he grew tired of that, he got into video games and created a video game that was actually bought by a large gaming company. One week after they sent him the contract, they went bankrupt.

Not one to be deterred by a setback, Michael persevered. Though he was the only solopreneur-spirit in his family, his father was always encouraging him to follow his passions. Michael wasn’t clear on exactly what those passions were but he also knew he was artistic. He was one of the rare birds who was a good artist and a good writer, his “secret sauce” if you will.

You’ll also discover things like:

* What’s the biggest content tool in 2014?

* What is unconferencing and should you do it?

* Who was once his assistant and is now an online powerhouse in her own right?

* How many millions of people visit Social Media Examiner now?

* What’s the number one thing 68% of marketers plan to do in 2014?

* And lots more!

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Eventually Michael did find a home for his writing and artistic talents: he became the director of artists at an agency in the 1990s.

From there, he found his way into the world of white papers and positioned himself as an expert. If you’re wondering what a white paper is, Michael explains it as a combination of an article and a brochure cross-designed to sell.

To solidify his expertise in the white paper industry, he published a book on the subject called Writing White Papers, created a big portal where people came to learn how to write and create white papers. He segued that into teaching marketers about white papers and training tens of thousands of out-of-work journalists how to write white papers and generate a living for themselves.

And from those experiences he understood the value in teaching and created deep relationships with the marketers and writers he came into contact with. From those close connections, Michael saw trends. He noticed they were all getting on Twitter, so he started interviewing people for his newsletter, which were very big back then in the late 2008/early 2009. With those interviews, he introduced marketers to social media combined with white papers.

He saw another trend emerging: people were going crazy over anything related to social media so he started hosting online events around the topic. Those events were the most popular and a light bulb went off in Michael’s mind: social media was the next big thing and he was going to be a part of it.

Michael had no idea how he was going to get into social media but he knew he was going down that path. The first thing he did? He built relationships. He got to know the people who were movers and shakers – the ones who were hosting events like BlogWorld and MarketingProfs.

His earlier connections paid off; one of his fans from his white paper...