Hi, welcome to building a business that lasts. My name is j o n and I'm your host on a quest towards stories, tips, and ideas, and we'll help you grow a business without being stressed out, worn out, and ready to quit. Each week. I'll interview other business owners who have successfully grown businesses of all types for many years. It's my hope that these conversations will help you build a business that lasts.
On this episode I interviewed Carlos Gil for the second time. Carlos is a worldwide keynote speaker and now he's an author of a brand new book that's coming out called the end . Oh marketing. I found the title extremely interesting and intriguing and we talked today about how he wrote that book. So have you ever been curious about what that is like to write a book? He's going to talk about that.
We talked about what he means by the end of marketing and how we can really humanize our brand in a way that we can actually get attention and impact. So without any further ado, here's my interview with Carlos
[inaudible]
.
April is welcome back to the show.
Jay, thank you so much for having me back on the show.
So what's really cool is you're the first person, so now have been on building a business the last twice, but we've got some really exciting new things to talk about us on . So glad you're here.
It's great to be here. And I've got to say it's such an honor to be a two time guest on the show. As soon as we're done recording here, I'm gonna go on Linkedin and update my linkedin profile.
Awesome. So we got to talk about the biggest thing that you've got coming up, right? Uh , you got a brand new book coming out, your first book and the title is the end of marketing, which is, I love the title. I love the cover. As soon as I saw it, I was like, man, that is so good. I wish that had been my idea, but it wasn't. And the subtitle is humanizing your brand in the age of social media. I just could not believe this more relevant.
I'm not ready yet, but I was, I've already pre-ordered it. It's in my Amazon, like a, whenever it comes out it's coming to me so I can't wait to read it. What I'd like to start with though before we get into the details of the book is what was writing a book like, cause a lot of people out there may be thinking, I'd like to write a book. I've thought about it. It's different to think about something and actually execute against those . So tell us about that journey a little bit
man . So I'm so glad that you asked about the journey because a lot folks just in general I think in the business world like to focus on the outcome of things. So I would love to sit here and talk about how the [inaudible] already has taught bestseller on Amazon, but I think that wouldn't do any justice to the process that went into, into writing this piece. So take a few steps back. I've been wanting to write a book for years .
So you know me, Jay , I worked in this industry now for the better part, some really cool brands having social media. And I've seen a lot of colleagues in the marketing space write books throughout this time and I'll be frank with you, I, I shopped around some different ideas to publishers over the last several years. I didn't get anywhere my pitches were turned down on the ad .
I attribute that really not being ready for the process because it's a process mentally, emotionally, physically and it wasn't. So last year on the day of my birthday in August, I woke up and literally it's the morning of my birthday and I said I am going to write a book next year and I sat on my dining room table.
I wrote what became the, the outline of the syllabus to bend the marketing and I sat there and [inaudible] I do key notes on basically a weekly basis like what are the fee , what are the key items in my talks that really resonate with the audience? What are the key items that marketers today need the most help with? And quite frankly, how do I write a book that is not just another social media marketing self help book.
I wanted to create something that is going to have some Ellis this to where I want to be able to create a book that's also going to be kind of edgy and the name of end of marketing. Just Jimmy Lee came to me.
Marketing as we know it is dead and what is marketing nowadays , let's like one of the things I bring readers through this journey throughout the book, like I don't tell them in chapter one you literally have to read all the way until the very last, my chapter 12 the five chapter for me to put it all together. I don't want to spoil it for you or for anyone. Marketer , marketing, sales, PR, communications.
So going forward with this process, I put myself in this mindset of I am going to write a book that is going to change careers and the books timeline. It brings readers from where we're at today. So assuming it's 2019 2020 and where marketing is going over the next decade. So cap , fast forward, do some of the fine details. Js .
I started writing this book right after the holidays, so I started writing it in January and one of my mentors, advisors , Brian Solis, who wrote the forward to then the marketing he told me three years ago when I started going down this process of entertaining writing a book. He said, you will have to sacrifice your weekends and that will be time away from your family time that you spent literally locked up in a room and he was absolutely right.
I spent [inaudible] the months of January , February and March, and all the way up until April 30th with my manuscript being due on day first. I spent every single Saturday and Sunday in this office. Were you seeing right now writing and there was times where I'd be at a conference and some ideas that come to mind and run back to my room . I'd start, you know, kind of adding some things to a chapter and it was just this process.
I don't know how to describe it and put into words other than it was, there's something you need to change. I think a lot of the book is me teaching people that part of it is also the recounting. Yeah . Parts of my life, parts of my code . I made it very personal.
Most storytelling, which is something that shows in the content if you don't mind, so I want it for anytime someone picked up this book, they'd never see a piece of my content for , for them to feel like a human connection to me, which a deadly , no pun intended, like the subtitle of the book is humanizing your brand and age of social can human eye . The humanization piece isn't just contents , not just through marketing.
Well , it's by every single piece of content at any one of us as personal brands or business brands create, we should be forming those human connections. So again, it was a process. I was really relieved to be honest with you when I was done in writing, because when I was done writing, then it became go time to start with the marketing and sales with the book, which frankly is the best part .
Well, that's what you do, isn't it? I mean they could be getting the attention, having the conversations around it. I think it's interesting, something like a book a requires so much discipline and I know when I wrote mine I kind of set very specific deadlines of what I had to get done and it was some parts were easier than I thought they were going to be and some of them were harder than they thought.
But just to kind of recap, I was taking some notes as you spoke there and I was trying to kind of summarize some of those key elements and the first one I wrote down was commit to it. You kind of woke up, we're like, all right, I'm going to do this thing. And the other one I wrote down was start now you sat down immediately and said, I'm gonna put some pen to paper also is it makes as interesting as you wake up and you come up with that idea. I think that happens to us so often.
Then we don't execute against it or driving in the car. Maybe you don't else an idea comes to small , do anything with it . We get out of the shower and we're thinking about, so we don't do anything with it. We wake up, I mean one of the big ideas with workshops here that we've been doing lately came after I was having a nap on a Sunday afternoon, but then when I woke up I picked up pen and paper and wrote it down. So I put commit to it, start now.
And then you leveraged your past experience, right? You're not just right about whatever. These are the things you've actually done. And I think in our industry, especially as marketers, there's a lot of, I don't want to use the word charlatans, but I will. There's a lot of people out there talking a big game. They have never actually executed any of these things. And the thing with you is you've actually done it.
So you've leveraged your past experience, you had a big vision, and then you just did it.
That's the thing that I will say just to be very the tumble and transparent about it. I think if I would've, if I would've written a book three years ago, you would have had people that say like, alright this Carlos Gill Guy , totally frantic and that's, that's the key to like anyone, anyone can put ideas down, anyone can teach. But when I say what sets teachers apart from leaders is do you have the qualifications and what qualifies anyone teach me ?
I could have said at 19 years old I wanted to be a motivational speaker and marketing coach, but 19 years old, what am I going to motivate besides maybe your group or maybe a few years younger than me? Like that's just a reality . So like back on this, I had to go through trials and tribulations in my career and in my life just to be able to get to a point where I can teach people based on the path I've walked based on the research I've done based on experience.
Like yes, you're right, there are a lot of people, whether it's the marketing industry or just any industry that like then walk around like they are bigger than what they really are. But then once you start to like peel, there's , you know , they really don't have the qualifications. You know, that's , that's one thing I really wanted to ensure that anyone can pick up my book, that you can call me out on things and it's like, all right , I'm ready.
Yeah. And you know the other thing too though, I think it's also easy, like, I mean we both been doing this marketing stuff for a long time. I've been at this since I was 17 years old, really since I was 12 but I've been in business for 20 years. So like, but even with that, there were times when I was writing my own book and I was like, oh, am I not good enough to do this? Like is it actually gonna listen to me like in season to have that own self doubt too.
So I think you can fall off either edge of the cliff. You can be totally unprepared to teach or you can actually be prepared but have that kind of internal doubt voice man you got , I feel like you gotta Punch that little guy in the face and tell him , look, I'm moving forward anyway. And that's what you've done here with this.
Well, here's, here's the thing about doubt though, that I wanna I wanna I wanna like interject there . Like if you are doubting yourself, it's for a reason. Like people call it imposter syndrome to other people and say you should fake it till you make it. I think it does in a day. You need to be honest with yourself.
If you, if you yourself feel like you are ready to take that leap in your career and go that next level, take a leap because you are telling yourself that you're ready and you will succeed. Like no one is ever going to come to you and say like, Jay , you're ready to write a book. Jane , you weren't ready to acquire a company. Like no one's ever going to say that to you in order for, you said the car now maybe I should do that voice. So you have any doubt. Listen to that doubt.
Trust your instinct, trust your intuition because there's a reason why that voice is speaking to you.
Yeah, I mean that's an interesting perspective. I think that, I think it just depends on the person sometimes too though, right? Like we, we all have, I think, I think the one thing we can say for sure is that self awareness is like a huge superpower and being able to understand like where you really are and then kind of leverage that has a of power. Cause I think a lot of times that's the big weakness.
People don't, they either way over value themselves, they way undervalued themselves, they don't have a clear vision and they don't even really know what their strengths and weaknesses are sometimes. And I found for me like learning where my strengths really are, that's had a huge impact of okay, this is something I'm not good at. I need somebody else to help take care of those things and I need to focus on where I really am.
Good. What I'd love to hear about now though is like let's talk about content of the book a little bit and obviously we won't give away too much when people would go by the book and read it. But in the marketing, humanizing your brand, talk about that idea of humanizing your brand. But what does that, what does that mean practically for people and how are people getting it wrong?
So here's the thing, social media, the Internet, Jay undoubtedly has become a really noisy ecosystem. I refer to social media as a noisy digital ecosystem or this giant digital ocean. Like I use that metaphor a lot and when it really means at the end of the day is it wants to rise above the noise that's being created. And you know, I'll throw some of the fingers out there based because I'm over 2 billion users.
Instagram has over a billion users, Twitter has over 300 million, linkedin has over 600 million. Like these are great platforms for relationship building for marketing. You name it, but in order for you to stand out on an anyone who's blocking worms, you need to figure out a way to form connections with people. And you don't do that by talking about your latest sale. You don't talk about what uh, you know your logo is just logo, your company name is just a company name.
So many people want to blame the algorithms, they want to blame the fact that it's paying to play . Like these entities are businesses. So like chapter one is breaking down the very basics of all of this is your trying to grow a business on top of someone else's business. Yeah, that's right. You need to understand that what you are trying to do requires an investment of time as no capital investment. That's one.
Two is who are the people today or who are the entities of brands that are gaining the most reach and making the most noise? [inaudible] people. They're not corporate entities. Like without people. There is no social media that exists. So in order for a corporate entity to even scratch the surface and rise above that noise, they need to implement the same strategies and same methodologies that you or me or any other content creator or celebrity or influencer implement.
And the strategy is real simple, be human, be real, be relatable. So I walk readers through this journey throughout the book of examples, corporate entities, corporate brands that are successful in doing just that. I use Wendy's as an example because I've made that they really set the, you know , the standard for how branch duck as a brand on social media, which is having a personality. Sometimes it can be a little brash.
I refer to social media as the wild wild west, but it resonates with people. They understand pop culture. They speak in a way that doesn't sound like a target or a Walmart speaking to you. They're not telling you that tide is on sale on aisle two. No one said their happy conversations with their constituents online and with the fans and followers of their competitions.
You know, early on in the book, it's setting the, setting the standards for as a corporation, you need to understand that the internet is noisy and you're not just competing against corporate. He's a quarter branch . He gets people, you're competing against me. You're competing against DJ Collins , Kim Kardashians of the world. Now the good news is that you actually have some resources at your disposal.
One, you can leverage your human capital in terms of at least you can leverage her employees and make them the faces of your brand. And you can leverage social media for social listening [inaudible] who's speaking about our brand , who's already creating content on behalf of your company, and then just use these mediums to form a relationship with them.
So by the end of this book, when I'm hopeful that any marketing executive , social media marketer or brand exac or small business starts to do, is they realize where we need to stop putting our logo in front of every user. And instead we need to start being human faces in front of social media.
Yeah, no, I think that's excellent advice, man . I saw some of the work that uh , you have collaborated with Hertz on and it created this like story in this environment. You go, hey, I kind of relate to this guy. He's traveling a lot and he's doing speaking engagements and, and he's willing to speak for this company, but you don't do it in a way of like, come rent this car. You know, it's , it's about telling a story and like showing an example. Like here's real life.
Like I just showed up at the airport, you know? Gotcha . You know, I've been traveling all night now, now I'm here, I've got to get to somewhere else. I need quick service. And , and creating those types of engagements that companies do. And Wendy's is a great example, really does humanize it and makes it feel like a totally different experience than the example of buy my stuff, buy my stuff.
The Wendy's example, we will get to a point in time where people will start to naturally to want to know, well, who's behind when account? Because we already had these conversations in marketing circles and that's kind of where things began . Marketing circles. And they start cascading out to , you know, just the general market. So with that being said, even with Wendy's at one point, we'll have to separate behind the digital card .
And you know, a big part of the book and every chapter with routing is there's an element of storytelling involved. So the way I structured this book is, first of all, and I've shared this in smaller circles, will say publicly, but we are structured this book is that each chapter is a keynote . So I looked at this as RN . I'm going to teach people throughout the 20th chapters I know have to write between six, 7,000 words, which is a lot. So let me structure this like eight .
So chapter three for example, which I'm talking about , uh , and I use the Wendy's examples all about community management and how to become better listening to what's being said on your brand, your competition, and your industry, and how to be what I refer to as a digital savvy. So Wendy's being an example with digital savage, they really don't care who they affect . Social media is the wild, wild west. They're [inaudible] , there's no restrictions.
There's no law that says like Wendy's can't go up for Burger King or McDonald's. Like there's no law that says that she was an agency, can't engage with like other agency clients. Like it is what it is. There's this open space that you can engage from within. So in this chapter I use the comparisons to pro wrestling.
I mean that's the story on the leading into how to be a digital savage where I share like growing up as a kid that I was a huge pro wrestling fan and as I became older I realized that pro wrestling was scripted. Fake . Well guess what? Consumers today are looking at social media, no different than pro wrestling. It's scripted business theater . Sorry , repeat that again. Social media marketing is scripted. Business Theater.
When you sit in a board room and you're writing out social media posts, oh week or two weeks in advance for a client, what you're doing is you are essentially scripting out what they are going to say every day for the next few weeks on Facebook, Twitter, linkedin, et cetera . And users nowadays at realize , well, this a scripted business theater. You're not a real entity. There's someone behind this brand. Well, who's that person? I don't want to have the relationship logo.
I want to have a relationship with the person behind the loop .
Yeah, no, I think that's super interesting. You know, going to be really cool to see how that stuff shapes out over the next couple of years and I, I think that a lot of people are going to miss the boat. Honestly. There's a lot of people that are so far behind already for where we are and they're talking about trying to get to where we are and what you're talking about is going, hey, what does this look like a year from now, five years from now? Where are we going?
Because ultimately as a company, that's the most important because if you're just driving to where we are by the time you get there, but he also has already gone. I think that's where a lot of,
I use the examples of like the circuit cities and Sears and toys r us of the world, these corporate entities, these corporate retail giants at one point where you know in every shopping mall on every street corner throughout America and now they're virtually nonexistent exception of a few stores that you might see, but same principles apply on social media.
All your brand will cease to exist digitally speaking when people are no longer speaking about your brand on social media, that recognizing there's a reason why people aren't speaking about you and touting you and shouting you out because you did a really poor job in the , in the entry level years of social media building a relationship with the general population.
Yeah, it's going to be, I mean there's going to be some blood in the water, you know, for lack of a better term, with people that aren't taking those ideas to heart. One thing I'd love to hit on is, you know , you got a lot going on, right? You've got the kids that you care about. You've got a speaking career where you're all over the world, you got this new book that you've just finished writing and now you're working on marketing and selling. So there's a lot of stuff going on.
You've got partnerships with corporations, you've got private workshops, public events, all these things, right? And it's easy to get in the midst of that. And some go, oh, I wish I had
that problem. But it is a real issue. And so for, for everybody out there who's trying to struggle, this party's how, what are you doing right now that you're having to go home and having to adjust these things because you know, there's just a lot more going on. There used to be. What is your priorities? Like how do you figure it all out, first of all? Um , that's, that's a great question, Jay .
As , as , as a business person, I always try to keep my plate full because as you know, running a business yourself, cashflow is king and he needed key cash flow coming in in order to pay your employees and literally keep the lights on. So prioritizing, prioritizing what is important and what's going to generate revenue ultimately is what comes first. You know , as you very well know I've had and backed out some different events throughout this year.
I've really had to dwindle down some of my commitments to where I am not overloading myself that I typically have the book. Even things like this podcast a month out in advance, I had to book meetings out like a month or two months out in advance because you're right, if I'm not on a plane going to speak somewhere, I'm on site with a client and there's deliverables and there's work that has to be performed and that's impacted some of my social media activity as well.
I will say this like over the last year I've become a lot better at outsourcing some different tasks. I know you and I have had some conversations offline about like executive assistance and the value of those brain . I just had to really learn how to prioritize my time, prioritize what is a nice to have versus what's a must have.
Like, I know that there's clients that paid my company, Gill Media Co every single month and there's deliverables that we have to perform before I ever do a podcast interview before I ever go out and step on stage. That is priority because that's what keeps my employees employed and that's what keeps my business running the book. I have a book deals so I have an obligation that to my partners here being Kogan page publishing to get a book out by x amount of time.
So then they have a product for them to catalog and sell. So again, like for any entrepreneur out there that's like me and wants to have their plate full, I would suggest that you proceed with caution because you might get to a point that you overextend yourself. And I know I've been guilty of that and I've had to very quickly learn how to pin it, how to have some very difficult conversations when you can't come through on something that you initially signed up to do.
And it comes down to really prioritize and like what are the one or two activities that you absolutely should take on versus the other eight or nine, which you can probably come back around to itself .
And again, for me, I knew as this year started to move forward like the agency, it's really important to continue grow that the seeking career, it's that I wrote that because I know that that helps amplify both sales, but same time without the book, then you're kind of putting the cart before the horse. So even with speaking engagements, I've had to be a lot more selective of where I get involved in.
And you know, I don't know, it's cool for me to talk about the Chanel , but you know, there's events that have been free events that haven't been compensated for that had to back out. Because again, it comes down to a time commitment. If I'm getting on a plane from Los Angeles and flying across the country, that's the day of travel to Denmark. It's a day back or those are three days I'm away from . Those are three days that I am not able to right . My book.
So a balancing act now that I'm not going to say it's been easy, it hasn't, I think that is where any and every entrepreneur goes through this maturity period where you have to start prioritizing outsourcing and really started thinking about the longterm because you can't get burned down over the first quarter.
Yeah. I think those things are huge. A couple of things that really resonated there to me. One is having that one or two things that are the biggest priority. Matter of fact, every Monday morning our team , uh , as a team meeting [inaudible] team meeting, we're still small enough. There's 16 of us that we can go around the table and say, hey, the one thing I have to get done this week is this. And then the next week we go, hey, did you do the one thing last week? You said you had to do.
And there's other things that have to get done. But like I think that idea of going, hey, what's the one thing I have to do? And knowing why that is cause it's propelling you towards a particular purpose, which might be keeping the lights on is extremely important. The idea of being willing to outsource or build a team maybe in unique ways because there's certain things that you'd really need to have somebody like right next to you physically along the , maybe as an actual employee.
There's a lot of other things nowadays. I actually had a guy , uh , John Jonas who runs online jobs dot p h there are Philippines outsource company and he was on the podcast not that long ago. Some amazing ideas. I've been able to give somebody else at another country, a full time job [inaudible] at way less expensive than what it would cost here. But you're helping them out and they're helping you out and you're able to keep that cyclical engine going.
Especially when you talk about recurring work or retainer work or anything like that. Partnership stuff you've gotta be able to deliver. And then the last one that you kind of talked about, which I think is so important to just double down on is it's okay to say no. Like sometimes you got to have those tough conversations of , Gosh, this is just not the best use of my time.
I'm going to have to back out of this or an offer comes in to do something and you really want to do it maybe, or you want to help or whatever. But it shouldn't. You have to be willing to say no. Somebody told me one time when you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to a thousand others. So people had to say no. They gotta learn that when they say yes to this one, have it over here. There's Alison other things they could have been doing.
There's a major opportunity cost and that's what you're working through and we're all working through to kind of figure out next steps on.
Yeah, like, and , and I love that you asked that question Jay , because again, we talked about the voices in your head writing earlier at the beginning of this recording. Like those are things that I, you know, how struggled with is, you know, sometimes I'm bashful to say no because there are opportunities that I don't want to disappoint people. You know, I want to be able to partner or collaborate, but there's only so many hours in the day .
And I even see, again kind of going back to the book, like you can't be everywhere and I've learned that the more I take on less I can be great and devote to the projects I really want to be a part of. You know , to your point about like you're , you're saying no to others. So , um , you know, with that I would also caution any entrepreneurs or people listening like have very clear vision of what you want to do or next 12 months. Like I'm a big fan planning for the longterm .
Like also I'm a big proponent of short term goals. So like for me going to this year, writing a book, was it short term goal and check off some of those short term goals even if it's one or two things a year. Because trust me, like this whole journey is called journey for a reason. Yeah. You don't come, you don't accomplish your life, your lifelong goals in one or two years.
I'm writing a book my 11th year in the social media marketing, which some might say like , gosh, it's really ancient, but not Jay get ready be 36 years old. I started doing this at 25 it was a lot younger that I'm older now. I like talkable with where I'm at because I have experience I didn't once have. So it's all perspective and I'd say again like if you have a lot of smaller goals, those all will add up on taking into your long term lifeline goals.
Yeah, there's a great book on it . I just read a called atomic habits by a guy named James Clear and he talks a lot about these like micro kind of achievements basically. And it made a lot of sense to me because it was like, we're always focused on these big things and we should have big and a hairy audacious goals as Jim Collins puts it. But I think that thing of like what , what can I do today that's like a big thing to check off that's gonna lead me to maybe that book this year or something.
And it might be a giant goal for somebody else, but I think having those short term and even daily like goal, what's the one thing I gotta get done today? It just helps you build like a little bit moment of momentum versus you know, takes a mind . Gary v WHO's like I want to buy the jets. I really honestly believe he actually wants to buy the jets. I'm kind of convinced at this point he probably will at some point as big as of a goal as that is.
But in the meantime he's got all these other things, these kind of checking the box on along the way. I think we've all got a move towards that. One thing I wanted to hit on because I kind of relates to goals and priorities and like just mixing life together a little bit lately on your Instagram account. I've seen you with your older son a lot more. He's been kind of traveling around with you.
So I thought it was cool to see you blend kind of work and regular family life together and he's out there watching you at shows. Maybe even recording you on stage. What was that like? Kind of , yeah . Showed him around a little bit and kind of see behind the scenes of what you
do for work. It was cool , but they , I think it was an awesome experience for the both of us , uh , for , for he and I find so secret that, you know , my son is from a previous relationship. My first marriage doesn't Jacksonville, Florida and I'm pretty transparent when I go back and forth and visit people, see them on my story quite a bit. But this was the first summer that he spends with me here in Los Angeles. And again, it goes back to priorities.
The work doesn't stop just because it's summer break for an eighth premier . Like the work continues, like they get last as a, as a business, as a business professional. And Aaron, I can say like Ra , I'm going to take the summer off as well. But again, it goes back to the prioritization. So I brought him with me to Denver for a conference school summit and I really wanted Carlos who thinks of Carlos Carlos see what it is that I do for him.
To me , because it's one thing to see me create content on youtube. It's another thing to actually be there in person and see that it's not just when dad goes on stage. That's one aspect. What I really want him to see was all the interactions that I have to do when I'm, yeah , I've been in Denver many times for business and for leisure. I would have loved to have taken my son and you look all the amazing things, but the reality j is it was a 48 hour business trip.
It was literally got off a plane really late at night. So he got to experience with like getting on a plane at midnight in La and flying somewhere and he was like all tired. I'm like, this is like how it goes like you must do. And he's like , I'm like, now you get to see what it's like when I'm by myself and you're not lonely life as an entrepreneur. And we got into our hotel and that's something that I've done many times.
And like he started going through those motions of like you didn't ask for an but you're on an eight and you're going to the convention center, you're networking. And I literally brought him along for the ride for everything . And again he was not so much me on stage speaking for the audience. I want him to see those interactions.
The people I speak to after I get off the stage, the people I interact with at our colleagues of mine when we go out to dinner and we'd go out to lunch like when we're interacting at the conference. So I think those are the things that will resonate with him the most.
When he hears me telling him about the value of network and knowing people, like we were standing on a street corner and some walked up and he was like, Hey your Carlos still like I follow you online, you should come with me like and like my colleagues out to lunch. And He's like, well dad, how'd you know that guy? I'm like, I don't, he knows me.
So like that's when kids realize all the sacrifice that we can make, all the hours that we have to work, all of the things that we need to do to provide for them, they actually get to see it in person and it was apprised , quite frankly. I would love to do more of that with ,
I love that you did it. I really enjoyed following along and watching the stories. It was just neat to kind of see him, you know, young and bright eyed watching you do what you do and get to see all that behind the scenes footage because even as transparent
plenty
of us want to be or try to be through insta stories or whatever else, it's never the full picture. It just can't be theirs . Especially, especially when things really get tangled up and you don't have time to record a video. You might record like a postop of a debrief of what happened when something went crazy, but you can't always experience it unless you're actually there when you're dealing with travel. You never know what flights going to do or anything else.
There's so many things that can come up and I think it's really cool that you did that with him because he can get an a also kind of a vision of like what hard work actually looks like versus like just what happens to showing mine and
that's fine because like you mentioned flags like leaving Denver, we all start flight . We were like literally within 30 seconds and then closing the gate on us. You know, just kind of sidebar conversation. We're in Denver, we're having some dinner with colleagues after the conference and like I wanted these guys that when I'm in market I like to stretch the clock as far as I possibly can because we love social media.
We live by all these beans , but there's nothing that replaces face to face interaction and I love those moments where I'm having a meal with colleagues of mine and the phone's off. I'm really not paying attention time and I realize like, oh my gosh, my flight leaves in an hour. It's like a 14 minute Uber ride and get to the airport. I'm going to be cutting this very close.
And he gets experienced that and you know, running from one gate to the next and going through all that room for Ra and yelling was priceless. He got to see what his dad does and it wasn't documented. I wasn't, I didn't have anyone filming that almost that we just share between us as father and son. We will always, you know , forever.
Well that's really cool. You did that as great value. It really made me want to take my kids along. I've not taken any of the mind to speak engagements or big business travel trips like that. And I kind of wanted to, I think I always think about like fun travel trips. I think it would be really cool for them to kind of come along for that work stuff too and get a feel for it. We're running out of time, which is unfortunate cause I feel like we could talk all day.
I really enjoyed the insight that you've shared. I think it's gonna be really valuable for other people. Thinking about maybe right in the road book or just think about marketing as a whole. So as we wrap up and you're, you're, you're thinking about talking to another business owner, and this could be a corporation and somebody who's in a corporate office trying to make some decisions or could be a small business owner who's trying to figure out this whole social media thing.
Like what's that kind of key advice they're standing next to you. They are in that little, you know, moment of the stoplight where you're , or a sidewalk, you're sitting talking and you're saying, hey, here's the one thing I want you to take away. What do you, what do you want to share with them as we wrap up the show?
Yeah, I would say j the best advice I could give to anyone, regardless of where they're at in their career, is
the
best investment that you can make is in yourself. And that's in your brand . So regardless if you work with an a corporation, regardless of you own your own company, and regardless of where you sit professionally speaking, making investment in yourself is a longterm investment that you will never go wrong. And I know that sounds kind of selfish because you know , I've done a police , you haven't police .
And I remember working in that companies where the leadership would even question like my own intent because they would see me grow in my brand on, on their company die . And honestly that was by design because I knew I'm not always going to be at this organization who you know, who knows you, you know, that's, I call it 401k account. And I know that if I talked about on previous podcasts, I mean devil , I'll just say real quick.
Like I would not be where I'm at in my career today if it wasn't for he can best seeing in relationships. And the way I look at every relationship in life is like a giant 401k account. I know JL way , the value of my relationship with Jio is priceless. But that relationship started by me just meeting you che and us over time growing the relationship.
And if you do that enough time and people get to know who you are and see that you're a good person and you are a giver, the Servant Mindset People started giving back to you two weeks ago, on a Friday morning, I received a phone call out of the blue from someone who runs marketing for a very big corporation and they said to me, hey, I got your name from this person. She said so many good things about you. What are your rates?
How when we start working with you, Jackie not had a contract Monday morning from an $8 billion corporation that recently. Well, that is the value of when you invest in yourself, invest in others too. So you can't go wrong. By investing in relationships, we can all create products that could fail or succeed. Y'all create businesses that fail or succeed.
I've made bad decisions throughout my career that haven't always panned out, but those relationships are always going to be there, provided that you [inaudible] feed into those relationships and give as much value. I know that sounds really cliche, but like I really don't know how they're , how else to put it. So again, like best biases, invest in yourself and invest in the relationships that can keep ,
I love that and I think that the reality is social media is just a tool being on the platform or just a series of tools to build relationships and to be a person connecting to other people that you actually care about if you actually want to see them succeed. And I think if you do that, if we all do that one , we're going to live in a lot better world and to will end up being successful.
It may take some time, I think the nineties things pile up overnight, but longterm consistent activity of caring for other people and being good person
towards other people that has real value and case in point, like one thing to throw in there and kind of bringing everything full circle about like the power of relationships and just doing good for others. Again in the book, I want readers through this journey and the very last chapter, chapter 12 the way I opened it up, as I talk about, I write about how the person reading the into marketing.to Carlos.
How did you get to me throughout this book and talk about how for years I pitched myself as an aspiring author and I was turned down one day a colleague of mine by the name of Michael Brito starts messaging me on Facebook Messenger. If you recall being a Jaguar Span, Jabbers were playing the Patriots AFC championship game . That was now a couple of years ago.
Okay .
He messages me about the Jackson Sun , San Francisco 49 hour span. He's, he's, you know, we're going back and forth and I asked him how's life? And he's like, great. And I just published my latest book and that led into a conversation which then led to Michael Introducing me publisher [inaudible] page publishing.
I sat on that introduction from January of, it was 2008 to August of last year in 2018 but the point I'm trying to make to your j is that I probably wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation with you a few months out from publishing a book if it wasn't for an introduction that came from someone that I have now known for years that happened to Randomly Ping me on a Sunday afternoon while I was watching.
I love it. That's right. Power relations , power networking. It's just different tools to use it with. It's been so awesome to have you on the show for the second time. I'm really excited for your book to come out. I hope everybody goes out and buys a copy, buy truck loads of copies and give them to all your people. If you want to find out more about Carlos's book, you can find it@endofmarketingbook.com and just search Carlos Gill .
You'll find them on Instagram, Facebook, anywhere else that you're on the Internet. He's there and has some great content that rolls out all the time, so go grab his book and Have Marketing book.com or you can just go get it on Amazon A. Carlos , thank you so much for being on building a business that lasts once again.
Jay , you are great. Thank you so much. It's always a great time to jam out with you and an honor to be on podcasts . Hopefully we'll make it podcast number three at some point.
Let's do it. I have it going man.
Thank you . I hope this episode has given you some ideas or inspiration that will help you grow your business. If you found it helpful and you know somebody else who might benefit from it as well, I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to share this with them, maybe on Facebook or Twitter or linkedin or even shoot an email over to a friend with a link to this podcast in it and if you haven't already, make sure you sign up for our email list@buildingabusinessthatlasts.com .