Welcome to the Jody Mayberry show. I'm excited to introduce Eric Gray to you. I will tell you how I met Eric, and it was through Matthew Miller who used to work at Universal. Eric used to work at Universal, but now he is the founder of Maverick Content Studio. And Eric and I have been talking for well, ever since he he left Universal, and I feel he just keeps getting better at what he does. And I finally said, look, Eric. You you just have to come on the show. I wanna
introduce you to people. So welcome, Eric Gray. It's so good to have you here. Man, I'm I'm super pumped. We've been talking about this for a while, so it's it's good to finally get it on the books and to sit down and and dive in. So thanks for having me on the show. Oh, yeah. I'm happy to because I've learned so much from you since you started Maverick Content Studio, and that in itself is a a story I could use the entire episode talking
about. This is what's really cool about Eric. He had what I think many people would call a dream job. Eric was the senior director of content innovation and fan engagement for Universal Studios. I mean, that is that is really cool. And most people would dig in and say, I'm exactly where I want to be. I'm having a great time. I work for a great company, but not Eric. He, he got a little itchy and he left and he started his own
content studio. Eric, that is just such an unlikely, and this is what I like about it, unreasonable story that that's where I wanna start. Why why would you walk away from what many people would consider a dream job? You know, it probably comes down to 2 words. It was purpose and passion. I think as I got into my, I'll call it early forties, although now it's mid forties, you know, you kinda start to take stock of your life and kind of what's bringing you joy and had a lot
of great things going for me. Right? Wife was good, healthy, great family, 2 kids, great neighborhood, great church, great community. And, you know, my dream was to build Universal Park's social media team to be the best in the world. My actual dream was to crush Disney at social media, and we did, by the way, just for the record. They kicked our butts at TikTok. They still are. They're doing great work down
there, and I know a bunch of those guys down at Disney. But that was my goal was to systematically put Universal on the map and to become the best theme park when it comes to social media engagement. And as I got into that that whole exercise, we got to a point where we had accomplished a lot. We had won some awards. We'd built a great team. We've had a great system and infrastructure. It took a long time to get there, and I was very proud of
it. And I got to the point where probably like many of your listeners, especially as you grow in leadership in corporate America, that you start to just spend time building decks, presenting decks, getting feedback, making excuses, and or trying to get convince people to give you budget to grow your team. And it felt a little less I kind of always called myself an intrepreneur at Universal for a long time. It started to feel a little bit closed in,
and it started to feel like there was a glass ceiling. And that's just not where I thrive. You know, I kinda thrive in the in the idea of growing and and building. And I just kinda looked around and I started to get to the point where I didn't really like who I was becoming inside of corporate America if I'm being super honest. And I wasn't getting joy out of the work. I had a moment one time I sat down with HR
and and I love this person. She's a great person, but I I told her, I said, you know, every day I put on a costume to come in here and be one of you people. And I know one of you people sounds bad to the listener maybe, but but what I meant by that was, like, this, like, corporate leader that's, like, in this box and does it their way. And I was a little bit of a rule breaker and I wanted to challenge systems and they liked that about me for 8 to 10 years. I think
towards the end, they were just like, I don't know. Maybe we we need people that kind of fit in a fit in a box. And I'm not gonna talk bad about Universal. Love the people. Love the brand. Miss them a lot. But I just got to the point where what I was doing there and where I was going wasn't aligned with my purpose and passion and what what God wanted
to do in my life. And so I kinda had to open myself up to the unbelievable, which was, yeah, leaving my dream job and starting from scratch all over again with a couple months of financial runway and a dream and a prayer and a supporting wife and and just seeing where it can go. And, you know, all I can say is that, we're 15 months in, and God is good. What a good story. I think so many people, even if they became discontent with how things were
going, they would just say, look. I've got a good job. I'm not gonna shake it up. I'm not gonna ruin this just because I feel a little itchy about putting on a costume and coming to work every day. Yep. No. It's it's right. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of people since then, and it's hard. Works hard, especially when you put your, for me and a lot of people I know put a lot of identity in it probably too much. Right. And so that's just kind of the point that I got to, or I wasn't, I wasn't
happy. I wasn't my normal self. And that was a, it was a hard realization to go through. I remember when I asked, when I told my bosses that it's time for me to go, it was emotional. I didn't really love the words that were coming out of my out of my mouth, but I just, I knew that I'd spent a couple years in this state too. So it wasn't some you know, when people do have this kind of change, it's it's not something that you do reactively. Right? It's something that
takes time. And so I've been in this state for a good bit, and I just I knew that there is something something more that was out there for me. So One of the things I really liked about how Eric handled his transition, he left Universal and started Maverick content studio. That's where we met right at the right in that transition. So I've got to watch what Eric has done the whole way. And Eric, I like that you didn't hesitate. You just started putting stuff out right away. You started
saying stuff on social media. You started putting useful stuff out. You came out with I forget the name of it because it's been a while, but a lead magnet to get people to sign up on your email list. You started a podcast before too long. Yeah. And I like that that you didn't. And I know you were concerned about getting things right, but you also didn't let that hold you up. You just said, I'm gonna do it and then we'll adjust.
And I think that was those bold moves in the beginning from an outside point of view is what has made Maverick so successful now because you were willing to take big swings right in the beginning and meet people, talk to people, and just get things going. I I always liked seeing that and thought you did really well with it. Well, I thank you for saying that, and I'll tell you that I spent a couple years kind of in the background planning
Maverick. At one point this is a funny story. At one point, it was called gray light. So Maverick was called gray light, and that comes from Matthew 514 in scripture. It talks about being the light into the world. And gray is my last name. And my wife, one type, told me we're literally sitting in the bedroom, just kinda chatting about, you know, am I gonna leave? Am I not gonna leave? Which I probably badgered her to death for, like, 2 years with that.
But she said one time she goes, just so you know, the name Greatlights Lame. And I was like, what? I've filed the LLC. Like, the website's bought. Like, we're down this pathway. And she said it sounds like some lame I sound super churchy on this podcast, but whatever. It sounds like some, like, lame, like, like, children's church name. Like, gray light. Come drop your kids off at gray light. And I was like, well, you ruined it for me. And she was like, you know, you wanna just
call it maverick, so call it maverick. For those of you that don't know, I'm from Dallas. I'm a Dallas mavericks fan. And she was right. I didn't think I could name it Maverick even though I that's inherently what I wanted to name it because I thought my friends would make fun of you because I'm a Mavericks fan. I've got Maverick, you know, memorabilia around this
office right now. And so that's just a little interesting an anecdote about how the kind of, the name came to be, and my wife is much smarter than me, and you should always listen to your wives. But the real story that I wanted to tell you there was I knew out of the gate that I didn't want to come out like many people come out. Many people leave a
corporate job, a lot of times, Universal. You know, people that have left Disney. And they come out and they'll post on LinkedIn, available for consulting. Happy to take a call. Right? And I didn't wanna be that guy. There's nothing wrong with being that woman or that man that did that, but I wanted to come out and look like I had a plan because I did. I did have a plan, and so I wanted it to be noticed that I had a plan. And so I wanted to come out and look like I had
a plan. I wanted to come out and look like we were building a brand from the jump. That was very intentional, very strategic. And so I I appreciate the compliment that you made, and I do think it was super important to come out of the gate. And, you know, you described it a little bit as, like, you didn't care about this. You just came and went and did it. I did care a lot. And I I know you didn't mean it like you didn't care. I overthought it a lot. I remember the first newsletter
I wrote. I was like, I don't sound like myself. I remember when I was writing on LinkedIn when I first started. I was like, I feel like I'm copying all these people that I'm learning from, and I was very uncomfortable with how I was being how I was kinda going out there into the public. But the one thing I can say is I'm I'm a former sports radio guy, and so that's where I'm comfortable is behind the mic. I can't help but be my authentic self when I get behind the mic.
And so I just tried to tap into that as much as I could. And so that that's kind of how he started, but it was, it was really, really important. I mean, I remember being in our our front room. I'm telling you a lot of stories here. But I remember being in our front room at our house, and I'd written up this long article about leading Universal and, you know, the and you can go read it. Still on LinkedIn at the Eric Gray. I mean, it is a it's a really great story. It's this full story.
Right? And there was a video that launched and all this stuff was happening at one time. And and my wife was like, when you press publish, does that mean you launched your company? And I was like, yeah. That's kinda crazy with that guts to where that we live in. Right. And so I did, and it was pretty crazy 15 months in a good way. Yeah. It's so fun to watch and a little more on what
Eric was just talking about. A lot of people leave the corporate world and say available for consulting and they just try to fit into what they think other people want. But not Eric. That not what I saw with Eric. Eric came out and said, no, this is what we do. This is how we do it. This is what we'll do for you. And I think it was just such an attractive way to leave a corporate job and start your own thing. It just Eric, you just came out like a bull moose. I loved it.
It it was fun to watch. You said something, and it's a word that I use a lot. I mean, you know, and we haven't talked about this, but it's too much. But social media content marketing, these are the things that I I love. I was a sports radio producer way back in the day, and my job was to keep people entertained from 3 to 6. I don't think our job in marketing is really any different. Keep people coming back, entertain them,
connect, bring value to their life, and build audiences over time. So that's the mindset that I brought to marketing universal and esports. That's the mindset that we're building Maverick up and we're trying to install and bring into many many other brands. And so out of the jump, I had to do what I believed. Right? If I believe that if you create value, tell authentic stories, and put yourself out there, but do it in a way that's polished, that's elevated. Guess what we were
gonna think. I mean, you know, many people that we hired, they were like, this is it when they walked in. Like, we thought it was so much of a bigger operation. It's because we created a little bit of a persona, not just an Eric persona, but a maverick persona that we were established that we were a thing. And, oh, by the way, guess what? The many times when you do that over and over again, at some point, you
kind of manifest that and it just starts to happen. And so, yeah, like we believe in doing things that attract attention and there's nothing against someone that doing this. You don't attract attention by doing the same thing everybody else does. So every corporate person that leaves and says, hey. I'm, you know, available for consulting. You're just you're nothing to anyone. So what I would say to someone that's thinking about doing that is that's not
gonna get you attention. What will get you attention? Well, what if you wrote a very deep and emotional story highlighting the very hard and difficult decision about leaving your company and posted that to LinkedIn? That's what I did. That was the most shared post I've ever had on social media. It had hundreds of comments, and I don't have hundreds of thousands of followers, but it resonated and people commented and liked and shared. And so because of that, that was just one
of many kind of rocket moments that boosted things up. And then you build and you build and you build. We launched the newsletter. We launched the content strategy template that you can still go download on our website at maverickcontentstudio.com. Plug, plug, plug. And then, yeah, then the podcast is live with radical radical content in it. But, again, even that, the people that I started the podcast with were so important. Right? We had the former head of content for
Bleacher Report. He's a buddy of mine, Sam Toles, the guy that leads all of digital for NASCAR and Tim Clark. Like, we came out with, like, bangers and, you know, it was all of these things are I talk to my team all the time about how are we being intentional in the little things because those things build over time, and it's what it's the difference between building a great business and building a great brand. It's good. I I won't stay on
this particular topic too long. No. Just keep complimenting. How come I will do this? This is the best time of my day. Well, to give you a contrast, I did it all wrong when I left. So I've had I've been out of my own for more than a a little over 11 years now. And I was marketing director for luxury home builder. And when I left,
I kept them as a client that worked out really well. Yep. Then I reached out to architects, subcontractors, people like that, that I already knew because I was in the building industry and I would, I'm making this some maybe a little worse than it was. But this honestly was the spirit of it. I would say, hey, Eric, I'm out of my own now. We've worked together in this format, but now I'm on my own. If you need some help and
they're like, well, yeah, great. I've always enjoyed working with you. What do you do? And I'd be like, well, depends. Well, like, what do you need? What do you need? Yeah. It did not go well. So I contrast my launch with your launch, and I'm like, oh, yeah. Eric knew what was up when he left. Well, you know, so a lot of it's I used to say this all the time. And this is marketing, a little bit of smoke and mirrors.
Right? Like, that's what it is. You're trying to create a perception, and you don't want it to be so smoke and mirrors that on the other side, there's not real value and it's empty. But you're figuring it out, and you're trying to create a facade a little bit of, like, we have figured it out. We hadn't completely, but we did have some very kind of strategic ways
that we wanted to position ourselves. And I I again, I just I think it's lessons on branding, and I don't think that people think about it enough. Like, right now, if you ask people that know of Maverick, what are your thoughts on them, They're gonna say awesome stuff about us, and they don't really know what we've even done with our clients. But it's just because of kinda me being out there and talking about things. And so, you know, I I think
those things are more important than people realize. Yeah. That is one thing Eric does well. I would suggest find him on LinkedIn and connect with Eric there because his LinkedIn posts are really good. I do not do so well on LinkedIn. I convinced myself I'm too busy, which Eric should shake his head at. But Yeah. You're not too busy. I'm not too busy. You've got to your priorities are in in the wrong spot. But look, at the end of the day, even for you, Jody, it's just about what are your goals
and how important is building an audience. And then once you answer those questions, it's like, okay. Where does my audience exist? And then I'd say, go build it. But you're doing it right now. You're hosting this podcast. Right? You you're out there. Don't beat yourself up. You're doing great. Well, thanks. Yeah. That and that's it.
Podcasting has been my thing. I mean, with 10 years in, all podcast combined, I've got I haven't counted in a little while, but I think it's close to 27 100 episodes by now. So when you find your thing, just do it. And podcasting has been my thing. That's great. Okay. So now you leave Universal. You have experience that you couldn't even buy. What you
got at Universal is just priceless. Not many people get to be at that level doing social media, interacting with the team, getting great is almost like this laboratory where you get to try things and so many people follow Universal that you get immediate feedback on how it works, why it worked, why it didn't work. And by the way, before I go on with that, there was one time long
before I knew who Eric Gray was. I took a photo of that iconic universal globe with the sunset behind it, And I posted it on social media, and universal commented on on my nice photo. So That was part of our community engagement strategy. So, yeah, we're out there. We we we put fans first, and so we had to be there with them. And that that is exactly the point I was going to make because it was a nice photo whether you you as in Universal commented or
not. But I'm sure you knew how that made Universal fans feel to have Universal comment or share Well, how did it make you feel? Oh, I thought it was the coolest. Yeah. That was pretty neat. I even think I remember going and telling people, look. Universal noticed my photo. Yeah. You know, we funny story. So this is, like, 2012. I'm at EA Sports. We're at Madden Bowls. If you don't know what Madden EA Sports is a big video game company.
Madden is the big football game. Now they've got a big tournament at the Super Bowl week and on stage is Snoop Dogg. This is crazy. I mean, it's a bit there's hundreds of people there. It's a big party. We launched the Madden NFL Instagram account live in that moment. This is the wild, wild
west of Brandon's social channels. And we literally gained thousands of new followers that night, and all we did was we just went around and started liking people's comments that just talked about Madden or talked about football or anything. And people just saw us and saw us. And so yeah. I mean, like, the basics of a community engagement strategy, especially for for a brand where people are talking about you, and even if it's, like, 5 people talking about you a month. I don't care if it's 5 or
it's 5,000, but you should be out there liking those comments. You should be commenting on every single one of those things. And we did that at EA Sports, found it very successful, and and, obviously, we built a pretty big infrastructure to do that at Universal. Yeah. And it's I distracted myself just to in that memory of how cool it was to have Universal notice my photo. That's cool. But now you've got this experience that is so rare and unique
to have. You start Maverick Content Studio. Now I know from working with a lot of Disney people, many organizations will say, yeah, that works for Disney. You've got all that money. You've got all that people. It won't work here. Do you run into any of that company saying, well, yeah, that could work for Universal, but you have all that money, all that people. I guess, you know, whenever I look at what we're doing at Maverick Content Studio, it's really
a audience building strategy. So, yes, we do it on social or we do it through a podcast or we do it through YouTube, but it's actually an exercise of brand building. That's what I oftentimes talk about. And when people think about brand building, they think about big emotional commercials that end up at social media or they think about the design and the and the real branding elements that you see in Target and that's
kind of, you know, your touch and your feel. When I think about brand building, I think about what's the emotional connection between the customer and the brand. So to me, the philosophy that I bring to Maverick and I bring to every brand has nothing to do with should you be on social media, should you be creating viral TikToks. It has everything to do with should your brand be engaging with their customers, should you want your customers to engage with you. So we talk a lot about engage first,
connect first, and build raving fans. That's just a a phrase, a motto that we talk about here inside of Maverick. It's something we share with all of our clients. And if you look back, at the end of the day, this is about what is the value of customer engagement with the brand? What's the value? Right? If someone is going into if someone's a a fan of Target or a fan of a fan of your of Apple, what is the value of that? The value is you know, some business people will talk about lifetime customer
value, and that's true. What I'm always aiming towards is fandom. And it's an extreme level of loyalty. Right? But that's my goal. So my goal in life is to help brands engage with people and build fans. That's That's what I wanna do. I don't wanna work for brands that are very transactional and that's all they wanna do. I'm not saying there's not brands that should
do that, but that's just not where my passion is. I want to work with brands that want to do things differently they did than they did before, And I wanna work with brands that wanna emotionally connect with people in a way that builds long term loyalty because we philosophically believe that is the way to connect. That is the way to build brands in a modern world, especially as you get into the younger generations. And so your question, how does it work when you've got all these resources
at at Universal and all these other people don't? It's not a point of resources. It's a point of strategy. It's a point of philosophy. It's a point of brand building. So my question would be, what are your business goals? Do you want to reach new people? Do you want your your brand to stand for something? Do you want to connect emotionally with a specific audience?
Then, yeah, that's what we do. That's what we're here to do. Now a lot of times we do it through social and digital channels, but that's in essence kind of what we're always doing. And usually when I have that chat with people, they're like, yeah. Let's sign up for this. I don't I don't know what it is just yet, but I I believe what he's selling. So I like the name of the podcast. I like the idea of creating radical content because that is different than what I hear other people say.
What is behind creating radical content, if that's what draws me to you, this idea of creating something radical, something different. What's behind that? If I now wanna start creating radical content, what are the keys of that? That's a big question. So I'll kinda go through a few different ways. First off, you've gotta be so intimately aware of who your customer is. What are their challenges? What are their needs? And so that's any kind of basic
marketing, but you gotta go deeper. You gotta understand their whys and what they're trying to solve for. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you gotta know what's out there. What are people doing today to help this customer? Because if you don't know that, then you can't be different. Lot of times people just dive in and do the same thing that everybody else is doing, and you're like, great. We're now relevant. And it's like, okay. Yeah.
Your table stakes now. Now now you're just at least showing up. But if you're doing the same thing that everyone is doing, there's nothing that's differentiating you. There's nothing that is making you stand out. So you've gotta go a layer deeper, and you gotta figure out how can we be curious with creativity and try to drive in and be more creative with how we bring these these sorts of things to life. And at the end of the day, it's it's a lot of kind of brand discussions
and and creative discussions. But, ultimately, it's kinda you know, I always tell people, create valuable content, invite them in to participate, and you will build an audience. That's it. Create interesting valuable content, invite people in to participate. That's the community side of things, and you will build an audience. And then when you build an audience, man, you can do anything you want. They'll buy anything you want because they know, like, and trust you. And that's the ultimate goal.
It's a relational marketing strategy. It's a trust marketing strategy, and it's one that sadly doesn't get a lot of time. Like, we well, the reason why we built Maverick is because we realized that there's ton of people at the top of the funnel that are yelling and screaming. There's tons of brands and marketers at the bottom of the funnel trying to get you to convert. I used to always say, they grab you by the bottom of your feet,
turn you upside down, and shake all the money out of you. Right? But then what's happening in the middle? There's this giant engagement gap. Some people call it the missing middle. They wanna jump from yelling to selling. The problem with that is you've spent no time in the middle building relationships. And so that's what we wanna do. That's what we're kinda screaming for, is to what are we doing? What is your brand doing to build relationships, to provide value, to educate, to
entertain, to inspire? And those are the questions that you need to be asking yourself. Oh, man. Eric, that is that is wonderful. This relisten to what Eric just said about creating radical content because that is fabulous. I think what I have done over the years and we can draw on what in particular with Lee Cockrell, what what we've done, I don't think there's been anything radical to it. It's just been consistent for so long.
Sure. And that has helped. But hearing you talk about that, if I took what Eric just told us about being radical, about connecting and combine that with the consistency, my goodness. I feel like that is some sort of magic formula. Yeah. I mean, you bring that up, and I and I do think that that's important. And we I'll sometimes tell people, I like to steal elements from the media world. Right? The media world I'm talking about is, you know, a radio show or a podcast
or a TV show. And I like to ask people, why do you watch it? Why do you come back every single week? And all of those answers are the same reasons why people should come back to a brand, but we look at brands through a different lens than we look at our favorite TV show. And so I like to try to say, what are those elements? And one of the big elements is they're consistently showing up every
week, sometimes every day, sometimes every morning. So, yes, consistency is an amazing tool when it comes to building audience. Now you still gotta deliver value. You still have to entertain. So my kids love Dude Perfect, and, secretly, I love Dude Perfect too. And they know when there's an episode that's dropping because they've built in that sort of familiarity with the audience, and they know the content that's gonna be created. And so they come back,
and they come back, and they come back because they built trust. And guess what? We've bought anything they've sponsored, whether it be BodyArmor or they did a smoothie at Smoothie King. We've gone to one of their shows. They were going we just bought tickets to their 2nd show. These are YouTubers. These are just content creators that make fun, entertaining content, but they are a core part of our life. If you ask my kids who are 8 and 10, it's a part of their identity. So they've gone from the
unknown to raving fans. Why would we all not want to go from the unknown to raving fans? But we don't. We act like it's transactional. And so it's awareness and selling, yelling and selling. Oh, it's so fun. And, Dude Perfect, I was not all that familiar with them. I had heard about them, but my son has enjoyed them for years. So when they came to Seattle, we went and I
was blown blown away. Not only was it a lot of fun, but to also see how they take this show that was is a YouTube show, but make it a live performance and then still find a way to engage the audience and keep the audience part of the show. It was brilliant. They've done such a good job with that. Yeah. No. It's it's really, really great. And you know what I'd say, Jody, is this this isn't new. What I'm trying to do, what I'm on a mission to do is to help people understand the power of
connection from a from a brand standpoint. They see influencers doing it all the time, the Dude Perfects of the world, the mister beast of the world. This isn't new, but brands act like this is impossible for us. But since 1967, there's been 21 research projects that's been done about the power and the importance of customer engagement with a brand. So this isn't new,
this idea that engagement is really, really important. We're just blinded by stock prices and transactions and p and l's and revenues in the near term to believe what the future term can look like. And these research projects that exist, they highlight 3 categories that are important. How are you building affection? How are you connecting building connection, and how are you building passion? And when you can
find ways to do this, it can systematically change your brand. One of the examples that I love to give right now that my team is probably sick of me talking about, and if I if I stepped over there, I could grab the book. But it's Jesse Cole's book, fans first, about what he's done with Savannah Bananas. The Savannah Bananas are a minor league forgotten baseball team that he was able to buy for pennies on the
dollar that no one cared about. They just finished up a statewide tour where they put more people in Major League Baseball hold on. Listen to this. They put more people in Major League Baseball stadiums than those Major League Baseball teams were able to do. And it's a fake game. It's not set up like the WWE, but it's not real highly competitive, the best baseball players in the world. They're very good, and they're really pitching, and they're really hitting, and there's winners
and there's losers. But it's an entertainment show, and they've done it by putting fans first, entertaining first, building audiences. They do the same thing in their marketing. They've never spent a dollar on marketing, on paid ads. They let fans tell the story about how amazing it is, and they create content that's entertaining and interesting. And it's like like, imagine if you went to a brand and was like, hey. Stop just stop doing marketing and instead create funny, entertaining
content. They'd be like, what are you? An idiot? But they did it. It's not impossible, but what they've done is very special, and I love using that example. Yeah. It is the best example. Jesse's been on this show before. I met him 6 years ago. So if you were to look at where Sav Savannah Bananas were 6 years ago to right now, it's incredible. If I feel like Jesse might have been the only one to believe what has happened could have happened. Anyone
else would have said no way is crazy. It's crazy. And he took a lot of he got roughed up a bit when he decided to exit the league. The Savannah Benares were in and create banana ball. People told him, look, you're ruining baseball and look what they've done. It is amazing. The other thing that comes to mind, Lee Cockrell and I do a monthly newsletter called The Main Street Leader. And Lee writes nearly every month, if not every month. It's still often about turning guests.
Disney calls their customers guests, and he talks about As does Universal just so just for we share that. He We don't call our team members cast members, though. That's where we draw the line. You had to draw the line somewhere. That's alright. So he talks about turning guests into cherished friends. Do what you need to do where they move from a guest to a cherished friend.
And when you empower your people that way, no matter your role, you know, you have one purpose and that's to make sure every guest has the best vacation of their life and you are, you can do whatever you need to do to make that happen. And it's just a different way of looking at things. It's like Jesse Cole putting fans first. It's like Lee talking about making guests cherished friends. What do you need to do when someone comes over as a guest and when they
leave, they feel like they're your cherished friend? It's a completely different way of looking at things. And Eric has taken those concepts and applied it to the way you brand and position yourself. Yeah. I'll tell you what though. It's not easy.
And so, like, that's the thing. If people hear this, and it's not easy. It's it's much easier to create one ad, put it into a platform, tell what the audience is to go find, and put a call to action link to our website and hope that they just spend $4,000 on a vacation or $100 on a t shirt. Like, that's easy. It is. It's easy to to operate that way. What we're talking about is harder, but the big but here is it is wildly more sustainable. That is good. Now to go back to a
comment you made about Yeah. Universal calling customers, guests, It reminds me what the first many years Lee Cockrell and I worked together. He would only refer to Universal as the place down the road, and now he calls Universal Universal. So there has been some progress. Yeah. That's good. We call them the place down the street. We call them so, yeah, it's, you know, they like to say they're in Orlando, but they're not. We are. So yes. Well,
Eric, I feel like we are just getting started. There's so much more we could talk about, but we needed this first episode to introduce you, to introduce Maverick Content Studio. Yeah. Hopefully, we'll have you back future episodes and we can get more specific about some social media and some branding strategies. But where can people find you and what you're up to? Yeah. So you can go to maverickcontentstudio.com if you wanna download a free newsletter. If you wanna follow me, probably the best
place to do that is on Instagram, the Eric Gray on Instagram. We create a bunch of fun videos there. We do some stuff on LinkedIn. You can find me also the Eric Gray on LinkedIn. But, yeah, you know, come on the channels, say hi, direct message me, tell me that you found, found me on on Jodie's show. I love to kinda meet new people and and talk to new people. So appreciate the time. It's been a blast. Alright. It's been
great, Eric. Thank you so much, and thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry Show. Don't believe the hype? It's just Sugar Jay.