Billy Gene is Marketing

Our guest today. The founder and CEO of Billy Gene is marketing Inc. A top ranked agency and educational hub for digital advertising and customer acquisition. His personal ads have been seen nearly 700 million times across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. He is a leading marketing influencer educator and practitioner that is revolutionizing the education system and empowering the masses by teaching the world’s most lucrative skill set that isn’t taught in schools, turning clicks into customers.

Billy has been featured by some of the leading public publishing brands around the world, such as Forbes, entrepreneur.com and the Huffington post. He was also recently ranked by Inc 5,000. As one of 20 nineteen most successful companies in America. Most importantly, though, he is the current guest of the run GPG podcast.

Billy, it’s a pleasure. Welcome to the show. I thank you for having me, you know, the beautiful thing about giving your bio to someone. When you come in, as you can say, all the cool stuff here, don’t forget this and this, and whoever on my team gave that to you. Good job to the, it is an impressive bio and, listen to my man.

I did want to get you on for a minute, and I can’t think of a better time to have you on as a guest because things are changing so fast. Every business owner, entrepreneur sales, professional, they’re talking about making their marketing, their branding and selling and the, you know, the post COVID world more effective.

So they’re thinking about it, right? Yeah. We’re excited to talk to you about, you know, all of that. Get your opinion on the current state of online marketing, but to set the stage for a discussion. I think it’s important to get a little bit of your backstory on how you actually ended up in the industry. One of the most recognizable personalities in marketing, safe to say maybe.

So I want to get, or unpack your story, the Billie Gene story, a little bit for listeners and subscribers. Again, I think Mo most of our listeners might know who you are already, but don’t know exactly what you do and what your company does. So that’s the first question. How would you define exactly what you do?

Like what is Billy? Gene is marketing. We help small business owners advertise so they can get more customers. That’s it sole focus is we run ads, how people get customers gets it that Nope. Don’t get that it’s awesome. And again, you know, that’s a topic everybody’s talking about right now. It’s on the mind of most entrepreneurs, business owners, how do I attract and retain customers and clients with this new reality?

And I think your backstory of how you actually got into this space, tells us a lot about who you are and why, why, you know, what you’re talking about and why you’re so passionate about the subject and educating the masses in the industry. So I want to ask you, about where you’re from and where you grew up and how exactly you got into marketing and customer acquisition.

Like how did you end up in the space and then to just go sub level deeper? Where did your passion for marketing and education come from? There’s a lot to unpack there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll say on a story side, like, I was born and raised in San Diego, California and have been here my whole life. I hold down Diego city forever.

Like that’s my place. Another story that will probably resonate with everyone listening. As I got here through messing up like a lot. And also through one question, I got into marketing because every single business venture that I tried to do, I kept coming into the same issue, which is how the hell do you get more customers?

Like, it seems so basic, right? But like, if you remember university, like anyone who’s listening, like there was never a customer acquisition course that was marketing, marketing theory, marketing strategy, marketing simulation, like business administration that dah, dah, dah. But like, no, literally what do you do to get customers in?

The problem with universities is they model everything. They teach off of fortune 1000 companies. And so for them, it’s like price, product, and promotion. That’s all you have to do and make lists. But like who, like literally who do you go to, to sell your stuff to, once you go through friends and family, like, what do you do?

So that ended up screwing me over, like frequently. I had a mobile oil change company right out of college. And I came to it. We had this, this, this van, it had like our logos on it and we looked all professional and we could go to cars and we can change the oil, just like the car wash companies could.

So you never had to leave your home again. We come to you and the idea we love. We bring it to life. During the business plan, all we had was like, we’re going to do. To get customers like that broad and think about the stupidity in that, like you and I, if I asked you what marketing is, it’s going to be a different answer than what I say different answer than what Nick says.

Everybody listening will have a different answer of marketing. Some people think it’s PR, some people think it’s advertising something that people post on Facebook. It makes no sense. So when your plan says go market, like what, right. So Noah changed company. I didn’t know what to do. So I ended up meeting up with this company called Groupon.

It was a little player at the time. It wasn’t Groupon. Like it was like, nah, I don’t want to do that. You’re gonna take half of my money from Groupon. And that’s how I started getting customers and learning about it. But then after that mobile or changes, didn’t go too high. I ended up working at 24 hour fitness checking in people.

And I just realized that every aspect of entrepreneurial venture that I did, even when I sold tea, I sold t-shirts back in college, like little dorm area t-shirts but it was. W where do you get the customer beyond the customer base at school? Like, so that is what led me and a really short summary to like this idea of marketing, because it was always the biggest thing of like what I couldn’t figure out.

And it’s amazing. And a lot of the signs would probably resonate with this, but if everybody were to truly audit their time in a day and ask yourself, does 90% of your time really going to asking people to buy your stuff? And the answer always is no it doesn’t, but without that patient make no money, like right now, everybody listening real tight.

How many people did you ask to buy yesterday? What about the day before? Last month, how many people did you ask to buy the whole game? How can you put out as many offers as humanly possible? And once I discovered that she has a crazy sense. Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible that backstory, you know, boiling it down to that question is pretty profound.

So you’re just starting out. How did you get your first customer? So. I got my first customer, like hustle, hustle, shit. So like, when I first pivoted again, out on a long journey, but like when I first pivoted, I said, okay, I’m going to do this marketing thing. First of all, I never called it that. I just knew about this thing called Facebook advertisements, where I could put a message in front of people and help them get customers.

So it was never like this fancy thing. So what I did at first, is I ended up going to Craigslist. And monsters. And I looked for companies that were looking for marketing people, and then I would go to their website and make screen capture videos. And this is like eight, nine years ago. I’d make screen capture videos and say, Hey, I’m on your website.

Here’s what I recommend that you change. I noticed that you’re looking to hire a marketing person, but instead of hiring a marketing person, like, want to just hire me as a consultant. I bet you, I can drive as many results, blah, blah, blah. Right. And I just sent out these videos all damn day. I would send them to people’s Facebook messages.

I’d send them to websites. That was my hustle every single day. But again, look at the math. If I were to make those little videos every single day. And I did at max, I could probably ask like four or five, six people a day. That’s not a lot of people right now. I can run a Facebook advertisement. And for $5 a day, I can ask a thousand people just think of that.

Like, it’s impossible for me to go back to those stupid, ignorant ways that I was doing, because I just know something. Right. You do YouTube ads right now, but like, people don’t even realize YouTube ads. They don’t even charge you on an in-stream ad, unless somebody watches 30 seconds of your video, do you know much free advertising?

That is like, people are like, how do you get so many people to see your ads if you pay for it? And then you just make a lot more money than what you spend. I like it super interesting, you know, and still talking about those early days, building credibility, you would have had to build credibility fast and I’ve heard you say this.

I don’t, I’m not sure where I saw you say this, but you, you said you didn’t look or act like your ideal client. So how were you able to. Credibility so fast. So let’s go deep into that. It wasn’t just built credibility. I was scared as, as, as you know what I was afraid because I went to the University of San Diego and I didn’t finish my last class.

I never graduated college. Typically I curse like a sailor. I got a lot of energy. I have a big personality, typically in a laid back style. My ideal customer at the time was a middle-aged white dude who owned franchises that was married with children. I couldn’t relate on any of the fronts and I’m black.

So, you know, most, some people are like, well, why does that matter? It matters in a whole bunch of different ways. One person is comfortable doing business with people that are. Just think about that. Most people build a business off referrals, right? Well, referrals are one degree away from you must be more like them when you’re so different, if you’re so unique, it just raises questions.

And sometimes you feel like you have to lead with a little bit more proof. So the reason why I did the screen capture videos that I told you guys about wasn’t because I was just so creative and going so above and beyond, it was, I was so afraid of not being accepted. I was so afraid of being judged.

I was so afraid of people thinking that I wasn’t good enough and I couldn’t do it. So I would send these videos to be like, look, you haven’t even paid me a dollar yet, but look how freaking good I am at this. Look how good I am. And I would show it. And you know, the, the, the number or the color that usually trumps.

Black and white is green. So, you know, I made it about that and, you know, we can go a whole different rabbit hole about that, but yeah, we’ll circle back to it. I like that the color that trumps them all is green. Interesting. Okay. So you’re someone who grabbed attention quickly. You built credibility quickly and early on, you know, you had engaging content right now.

What should people focus on with regards to their content? I’ve heard you say this boring will put you out of business. Boring. Doesn’t sell. So what should people be focusing on? In terms of content. I want to say too, the reason why borne doesn’t sell isn’t just because it’s a sexy tagline, right? Boring.

Don’t sell, be entertaining. Like everyone knows , mathematical boring doesn’t sell. So what happens is most people nowadays are getting their customers from social media. Well, there’s something that everyone could relate to. So if you look at your phone right now, you log into your Instagram.

And if you go to your insights of, of, you know, how many people see your posts and things of that nature, right? Well, anybody’s, if you guys are scrolling right now, you have some posts that get a lot of views on a lot of likes, right? And then you have some that like to get none. And you’re like, what, what the heck is going on?

This thing is scamming me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, that just was a boring ass post. Nobody cared about, see, the algorithm has never changed. People always say, oh, the ad gets rid of them. Oh man. Gosh, it changes. No, it doesn’t. It’s always the same. They show entertaining stuff that people want to see. And so, for example, going back to offers, the more money you make in the old school is directly correlated with the amount of offers that you make.

If the algorithms show things that are more entertaining, sometimes 5, 10, 20, 30, 800 times more than how much money are you losing on the table? How much money are you leaving on the table as a result of not being entertaining? So again, let’s put the math behind it because people think that’s just like, let’s be creative and let’s be out there.

No, no, no, let’s be strategic. Let’s be strategic. And so that’s why when you’re creating an ad right now at home, you have to stop. How can I make somebody laugh? How can I make them smile? Because the truth is you can wrap a business, pitch, a sales pitch in anything, right? We can start talking about bananas right now, and then we can talk about, but you know what?

Just like a banana as you start to pill it, you realize business can go in so many different directions. One day you peel the banana, right? Like you just there’s anything you can make up and you can make anything about business. Anything. That’s creativity. There are people. W when you have challenges in business, this solution is, is, or the thing that’s holding you back.

The, the impasse, the, the block in the road. Why are you being impeded is always one word creativity. People realized it’s never a, oh, I have a shortage of money. Problem. I just need more money. No, you have a shortage of creativity. Cause you ain’t figured out how to go to a rich person and convince them to give you.

There’s no shortage of money. You know, people talking about the recession, oh, you know, people are pulling back. No, you know, people aren’t spending, you know, there’s statistically mathematically more money in the world than there was before. COVID they printed more. They gave away a whole bunch of United States, especially there’s just a print Fest.

There is actually more money. The money didn’t go away because people think like COVID happened. Then everybody just went to the trashcan and started putting money down to disposal. Like, like it didn’t happen. The money’s there, it didn’t go anywhere. It’s just, people are a little bit more wary about transferring it.

So your value proposition just has to be better. People are less apt to just let it lose their fingers. It doesn’t mean they won’t. You just have to be more creative with how to get it out. Every single problem anybody is having listening to this right now can be solved with creativity. I don’t have the money to hire somebody, hire somebody and ask them to help you and don’t pay them money.

Do you have something else that you do? Creativity. It’s never, it’s never that thing. Problem. It’s always creativity, dude. I hope our listeners are really like, there’s all so much to go through there, but it, I mean, you really dropping bombs here. I mean, this stuff is incredible. Like the points you’re making, you’re touching on your concept of the three E’s right.

What is that? Can you unpack that for us? Absolutely. Entertain, educate, execute. And in that order, so the entertainment goes with what we were just talking about. You got to get someone’s attention and you know, some people think, well, I’m not naturally, you know, entertaining or something like that, but guess what?

You can talk about something that is entertaining. You can comment on a video that does have, and that could be your content. You can, you can use someone else’s, you can use a giant prop, right? You can, you know, I got, I don’t know if they can see, can I see my video or is it just audio? Yeah. So I’ve got my gold microphone right here.

That’s a prop deal. Why do you get to go to the microphone? Cause if I want to go on camera and I want to catch someone’s attention, I can shine that in their face. I know it’s going to slow them down and stop them. Everything’s a prop, you know? So again, you don’t have to be the entertaining thing, find entertaining things, find entertaining content, and then comment on that.

So, you know, one, I want to encourage everybody to like to put away your things and also. You know, the ad is what makes an advertisement or a message, a marketing message, as good as the demonstration. You know? So for example, like if you guys have ever been to like a trade show or like a carnival or something, you know, you go to the carnival, the trade show and you walk in and there’s always that one dude with an earpiece on, and he’s selling knives and like he’s, he’s, he’s selling knives and granted he’s he’s, or she’s a great salesperson, but what’s even better as they’re great at demonstrating their product.

They’ll take like a pair of scissors and they’ll try and cut vegetables, but see it doesn’t do it, but I try it this way and dah, dah, dah, and it’s fascinating to watch or think about on like, you know, how many times have you guys been browsing the internet and been caught up by like a food video?

You’re not even into food, you weren’t even hungry, but seeing it built together was so fascinating. Okay. There’s the bun, there’s the Patty, there’s the lettuce, there’s tomato. And then they show the time-lapse and it. You don’t have to be entertaining to make entertaining content, right? People love to see how things work.

People love a great story. People love, you know, a controversial opinion, you know? So in, that’s the other thing too, is a lot of people think that. If you’re going to get someone’s attention you have to do all of this off the wall stuff, but that’s not true to get someone’s attention. You just have to actually speak your mind and tell the truth.

Give a great example. Donald Trump is the biggest topic in the bill. One of the biggest topics in the world right now, and the things that. Lot of people can’t stand it. A lot of people love it. Well, guess what, if you simply say you don’t have to say a bad thing, you can just say why you like the other side, you’re going to get more engagement than you ever have before now.

Does that make you a bad person for stating your opinion? Even if it’s completely positive and not saying anything about it? No, but it is the truth, but what people cannot do right now is live in this gray area. Well, I’m just not going to participate, man. I’m not going to say anything black lives.

Well, maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. I don’t know. You got to choose a side like this, like sitting on the wall and just hope he should pass is like, yo, that’s done. That’s done. And I love it. I love the fact that people are getting crushed that are quiet in the middle, choosing a side. It doesn’t make you a bad person and let’s be adults and learn how to listen to other people’s opinions.

Most dangerous person on the planet is someone who’s decided someone who knows. They know. They’re not open to hearing anything else. That’s a dangerous person. Oh, Democrats are this way. Oh, Republicans are this well, black people are this way. White people, it looks like this is over. Bill’s always the worst type of person.

Close-minded two ears. One mouth, listen, twice as much as you talk. Nobody follows that. But I really like it, um, it was funny before the podcast. I was having a conversation with my team and I wanted to run a bit of an experiment. And I asked him, “Do you guys, like when I say the name, when I say Billy Gene is marketing, what comes to mind and was funny, was they all, there were eight guys in the room and they also had the same thing.

Almost all of them referred to your ad, the Wolf, the Wolf of paid ads. Oh yeah, that was fun. And it was funny because half of them were like, that was the sickest ad ever. And then the other half, they hated it. But the common thing amongst all of them was they were all talking about it. So the reason I’m bringing this up is you’re not scared to be polarizing.

You’re not scared to take a stand. And the thing is like right now, you know, you’re talking about the Democrats and all that stuff. Everything is right now, people are so scared of, you know, there’s all this culture like cancel culture and stuff, and people are scared. You’re not scared. And again, the common thing with everyone that I asked that too, they all knew you had a different opinion, but they all knew you, you were getting their attention.

Yeah. So I would say that the people who are afraid of council culture are the people that will not whenever. This is always a common theme. It’s the people who are like, afraid, like you realize council culture is just, it all goes like this. Someone said something and then they found out that they weren’t really that way.

Like, oh my gosh, did you hear what you know, like, blah, blah, blah set. And they’re like, yeah, he’s a hypocrite and dah, dah, dah, dah. And they get so mad. Right? Like for example, if someone was out there creating content, they’re like, yeah, I’m racist. And they’re like, yeah, like I know you don’t agree with it.

Like, whatever, like I’m racist, you know, a big they’re falling would be, be massive, be a bunch of racist people all hanging out. They would buy their stuff. Dah, dah, dah. And you know, how do you counsel a person that comes out and says, Yeah. They’re like, Ooh, leaked footage of this person saying the N word.

They’re like, yeah. He says it all the time. He’s racist, racist. Like, it’s all about just people who aren’t themselves. So like me, you know, the number one thing I hear when I meet people in person, they’ll stop me on the street. Oh, Billy Gene dude. You’re just like on your videos because I’m actually me out among people you follow.

They’re not the same. They turned the corner on dah, dah, dah. They turn on a cam and they gotta be somebody I’m just me. Cancel Billie Gene, try. You’re gonna be like, well, this one time he said, yeah, I know. Have you heard of his podcast? It’s the most offensive thing ever. This guy’s crazy. Like my podcast Billy Gene is marketing. Every episode I just talked to, it was like, what is that? A cancel it’s now you can not like me. You can choose to not partake in what I do and watch this. I respect and love those people. The same. I have no ILEC, no malice, nothing. That’s all love because you just realize like, no matter what people always would try and find something to say, and here’s the deal is like, when it comes to admiration, you know, like most people there’s some people who are bad and just like how bad messes it up.

And they really are very divisive. Like Trump literally has half the world hate him and half love him. I don’t believe in that. And I believe he has the power to bring everybody together and he just chooses not to, because he likes to use his power that way. And I think that’s disgusting and annoying.

Um, but like for me, for example, I never try to like, say anything bad about people and polarize in that manner where you have to take a shot. If I, if I have to take a shot, if I have to build the biggest building by taking shots at others, that’s weak to me. You know what I’m saying? Like, like in a game it’s like, and if you do take a shot, cause sometimes in life you gotta call people out.

Just make sure you call shots on both sides. Like, I’ll talk some shit about Trump all day, but also talk some shit about Biden all day and not care. Like I don’t, it isn’t, it’s not we’re humans. Like even the fact there’s a political party system in the U S and I know this, you know, shout out to Canada, but like, and they just, the fact it was a political party system that separates people into teams of two, but it’s just picking the person who’s best is already flawed.

It’s already flawed. Yeah, it looks right. Like, it’s just like, it’s the stupidest thing. And so, like, I don’t like to subscribe to the comments, the most ignorant comments start like this: will Democrats believe, will Republicans believe not true because I can tell you this. There’s a whole bunch of Republicans who believe in all kinds of stuff.

Um, that Democrats believe in there’s a whole bunch of Democrats. I believe in certain things about Republicans, it’s just not true. Like nobody believes every like no one, no one even knows what a Democrat is supposed to believe in a broken all the way. It’s crazy. You know what I’m saying? So anyways, I digress.

Yeah. The point you made though is, you know, everybody needs to start listening instead of just shouting at, you know, their opinion, but listening is important. I think that, I think that’s true. And you touched on a key point there. Um, the other thing you touched on, which is key, is what you’ve talked about before, which is differentiated by demonstrating.

That was, you know, what you were talking about when you go to a trade show and you see the guy with the knives doing the demo and that demonstration outclass his proclamation. Yeah. Just talk to us cheap, you know, online right now, the problem and the opportunity, the same time as the barrier to entry. Everybody can get into the game, which is why you see so many quote unquote, you know, people who really don’t have accolades, but they’re out there doing their thing anyway.

Yeah. Gurus. Right. So there’s the dangerous part of it. But the other side of everybody being able to put out content so easily is it becomes a. Very easy to get lost in the noise because everyone can put out something. And so demonstration is critical because it’s a lot, one thing that allows you to stand out.

So one thing I did in a lot of my marketing videos is like, I’d go to businesses. Like my, my, my advertising videos that did the best, like catapulting our brand and company are ones where I took over a business for the day. So I, like, I took hugs. There’s a company, a big franchise called massage envy. I took it over for 24 hours.

I bought them like 300 leads in like 24 hours and broke the record or something like that. And I recorded the whole thing. I put it out and I’m like, Don, even now today, like, I’m like, you give me any small business and you just give me their marketing. I will whoop anybody in the world. And I believe that by like results, like didn’t like, like straight a, you give me a camera, a computer, a laptop.

And you bring me into a small business, right? Like, maybe 5 million or less things like that. And I will crush what they’re doing now. It might get knocked on my ass every now and then, who knows. I don’t have that expectation and that’s because I practice, you know what I mean? But, and, and I’m willing to show that, you know, and, and everybody wants to talk like, who cares?

I don’t care what you can say. Like, it’s marketing, there’s a scoreboard. It’s called money. Like, you know what I mean? Exactly. You got it. Or you didn’t like, you know, in poker, I think that the gap in this, for everybody listening, like, you know, understanding the relationship between marketing and sales and a lot of people time people Mo you know, what’s funny is most of the time when people blame marketing for something, it’s because they ask itself, it’s like, it’s almost like, it’s like, it’s like a fact like, oh, like literally, like they’ll get leads or like, you know, these people were calling in and they didn’t ask for this specific product.

What’s up with the marketing? It’s like saying no sales person, ever a true salesperson. Let’s get them on the phone, but they’re not even looking for a house right now. I don’t care. Are they qualified? And that’s the gap. What’s the difference? It’s like, this is why I don’t even like most marketers right now, their style, because everybody is so like, we’ll just put it out and put out seven pieces of content and maybe they’ll call you.

I’m like, give me your phone number and then you will buy, like, you know what I mean? If I believe it’s good for them, you know? And that’s it, so I think there’s a cell shortage and nobody likes it. You know, I got some products that will advertise on the sell site and it’s excellent training, but it’s so much harder to sell than, than marketing because marketing is selling a, you know, pizza, stuffed crust and cheeseburgers, and you know, sales is selling broccoli.

I don’t want sales. People hate sales people nowadays. It’s such a bad rap, such a bad rap. Yeah. That’s a shame. It’s a shame. Cause not all bad. Not all salespeople are bad. It’s just that it’s you, it just takes a few to, well, it’s funny. A hundred percent in the best salespeople. The problem is, people don’t call themselves people.

You know, they’re just not, I just kind of hitches Steve, dah, dah. I was like, dude, Steve soldier, you look down. That’s my guy. Yeah. But he sold you like, you know what I mean? Then we realize you’re taking the words out of my mouth. Cause you know, no matter what, if you’re, if you call yourself a sales professional, you’re in the deal, closing business, you can’t lose sight of that.

So, you know, your sales skills are important, you touched on something. I just, I want to ask you about specifically the difference between branding and selling on social media. It’s a topic that comes up a lot. Like what’s the difference between branding and selling or what would you say is the difference between, building a following and building a brand on social media?

There’s two different questions, right? So demonstrating branding and selling. We’ll start then. And we can circle back to the following thing . when I think of a brand it’s just, Hey, when your name is mentioned, what goes into that particular audience’s mind? That’s your brand. And it’s a funny thing because I brought in the audience part of that definition, because I think it’s really important because brand means something different to a lot of people, the Confederate flag, which is a flag in the US that you know, to a black man, not in the south west coast.

I see that as like, that was the flag of slavery. But if you go down there and you ask like a white person, they’re like, this is culture and this is history brand fascinating right now, Brian, there’s two different things, you know, like Clorox or like a cleaning product. To me, I’m looking at, it’s a cleaning product.

Everybody knows that that’s super trusted. You ask somebody who’s really into health and likes the environment. They’re like, oh my God, toxic poison destroying it. I can’t believe we are allowed to spray that in people’s houses. So why bring that up? Because a lot of people are afraid of like, how is my brand perceived?

Well, the question is to who. Right. Like to who, and really people need to have that in mind of like, who matters, you know what I mean? Like, cause everybody’s going to, it’s going to be relevant that you take a brand, no matter what the brand is, they will have a bunch of horrible things to say and they’ll hate it for so many different reasons who cares about them.

Right. Um, so there’s Brandon says, Hey, what comes to mind? And the second thing is like selling it’s, you know, when I create my ads, all of my ads sell all of them, every single one. And what people don’t realize is how I tell the story in that ad is how I’m building my. Period, you know how I’m doing it?

Like, you know, and so I do strategic things like, so he brought up the, the Wolf of paid advertising, you know, that’s one of my ads and that one’s, you know, aggressive and polarizing. And I, I started off, I’m holding my CMOs of the company, her hair, and I say 25 grand. And let me shave her hair, like, okay, like what kind of guy is this?

And then the next one may be me and my daughter driving in a Ferrari on a daddy daughter date. Then the next one may be me, you know, with my team, like having an intimate moment, next one may be what my dad and I just surprised them, whatever ALEKS, like, there’s the thing that is so funny about advertising is it’s made up and you control it.

Like my brand is like, someone’s like, what do you think about Billy Gene? It’s whatever I told you to think about me, people don’t realize like, what do you think about me is whatever I told you. Like, you see everything someone sees on me is because I put it in. Yeah, so I can show your narrative. And that’s what I needed people to realize cone back to the road today, you fuckers, they watch CB watch NBA, or they watch Fox news or CNN.

And then they’re, they’re like, I’m so informed. No, you’re just reading a script from someone like me. Who’s telling you what to think? Like people control it. Like it’s, the narratives literally created the story. Is there it’s whatever. Like it’s just like in wrestling, you watch pro wrestling. Like they tell you who to love.

They tell you who to hate. It’s not a mystery. And then you have some outliers there who will go to the other side or there’s issues, polarizing topics where you’re forced to choose a character if you liked them or not, but it’s, it’s there your villain and a character in Disney, it’s all written. So I think there’s a great opportunity.

Like what your clients think of you, everybody is up to you. Like you control. If you’re a real estate agent, you want to dominate 9, 2, 1 0, or Providence isn’t or whatever in Canada, like the area where the helicopter, they call it, which I’ve got to pass this province of provinces, the provinces up in Canada.

You just type it in and show people in that area, whatever you want to show them. And there’s a form that I’ll give you guys math for it. You can literally create, this is what music’s the best. They just show it. Because it’s literally like the most fabricated thing on the planet. But how people perceive you is made up of where they see you.

Meaning like, for example, y’all see me on this podcast. You rock with this podcast, you trust this podcast. You trust, you trust these guys. You love them. Now that I’m here, all of a sudden, like I get enough. Strategic, right? Like I’m showing you what platforms I’m going to show up. Okay. Then it’s like, okay, where else did I see this guy?

I saw this guy that in my last podcast and Andy Facil podcasts are also guests on him now. Boom, boom, boom. I got four. All of a sudden you’re like, okay. I think I like them. I think I trust them just because of what you saw, even though off camera, me and Andy could hate each other. Like I can get out, but he’s David, Nick.

I won’t get out of here. Like, we can hate that about whatever we showed you, what we showed you and control that narrative and just pull the string. Right. In addition to that, it’s where you can read what magazines people read. And by the way, you guys can actually do this exercise for your stuff, your ideal customer who you’re trying to go for, what do they read?

Where do they hang out? Who are they hanging out with? If you can answer those questions, control that narrative. So, you know, for example, if I build my brand, okay, Hey, what podcasts do I need to show up on to be like top. Out of my class. Okay. All of these. Okay. Let me go check like the top 10 business passes.

Probably been on all of them intentional, right on purpose. Okay. There’s one magazine. Okay. But serious entrepreneurs. What do they read? They read Forbes and, and all this other jazz, they kind of hold the thing. So what do I do? Go get a publication net then here’s the scary thing about all this y’all um, especially for those of you that are more on the come up, just starting, like all this shit is, is just like paying to play bullcrap.

Like now mind you, there’s definitely some legitimate circumstance, legitimate episode and air quotes, a circumstance where you can just get featured on things. But most of the time you see anybody in any publication, it was like, I’ll give you a great example. You know, there’s, you can be on all these websites.

You three, we can all start a company right now and we can go up to Forbes and say, Hey, we would like to buy three pages in your magazine for the next year, but we want to be able to feature what we want. And then we could go up to entrepreneurs and say, Hey, do you want to be featured in Forbes? Give me three grand and we can make that a whole business.

And then we just have that cover what we’re paying Forbes. And there it is. And we can put the article, you know, 5,000 dada. Granted, we do all of these things because people are ridiculous and they need these stupid things. But like we could like San Diego’s fast-growing company, you know, San Diego’s best places to work.

Right. We’ve been fused in that in the last few years where like top 20 or whatever, and. Literally like to even be a part of it, you have to pay like a 50 buck entry. Like it’s a money business. And then they future you and they’re like San Diego’s best place. And then they rank them like put all this stuff is like, it’s, it’s just all like when you guys really see, it’s like, I’ll give you another one.

I used to work at the radio station. San Diego’s number one hip hop station was called Z 90.3. I interned there and they used to do this segment called a war of the roses war of the roses, where I would call. I’d be like, Hey David, and I’d call you randomly. And I put it on the radio. I say, Hey David, this is Billy Gene calling from a building’s flower shop.

And you have a chance to send anybody. You want flowers right now. We’re new in the new area. I’m just trying to earn your business. So who would you like to send a flower? And then everybody’s listening to see if he actually sends it to his significant other. And I used to listen, it’s going to get intense.

Right. So then they’re like, oh, and then they’d say everyone. And then the significant others listened. They’re like, who the hell is that? Who are you sending flowers to? It was called war of the roses, it was a massive segment and went crazy. And you can see I’m entertaining. That is right. Did I listen to it?

Definitely ruined some lives. Oh yeah. Oh, it gets worse. So I listened to this segment forever. Like I said, I grew up in San Diego. I was like, oh my God, it’s so good. It’s so crazy. Dah, dah, dah. I started interning there and I’m on the morning show. And um, next thing you know, they’re like, Hey, you can write right.

You go to that, you know, that fancy school, you’re a good writer. Right. And I am a really strong writer. I was like, yeah, I can. And they’re like, okay, cool. Here’s what I want you to do. And I was like, what? And they’re like, nothing, just wait. And then next morning I show up to the radio and the, and then, you know, my producers are sitting there and stuff and they’re like, okay, you ready?

I was like, sure. And then all of a sudden they go, hello. And there’s two people on the phone. And I was like, who the hell is this? They’re like, oh, these are the. The actors calling and there’s actors there there’s actor A, actor B, and then you give them a scenario. They said, you’re a writer. Give them a scenario right now.

What’s the word for the roses that happened today? And this was called the morning. After someone goes on a date, they want to know why the person didn’t call back. They’re like, write it right now. And I did. And I wrote for like three months and I wrote every single scenario. I’d give them their words, their jokes, their brains.

So dah, dah, dah. That was my special first expense. We’re writing and television or radio. And I learned at that moment that everybody is full of shit. And when I decided to build my brand, it was going to be real. You know, you don’t like me now. Some of you are like me, but most people do. And that’s why I have 103,000 students in 75 countries.

It’s like, you can’t fake my numbers. Like I don’t like, you know what I’m saying? Like, so I don’t, it’s hard to pay attention to any haters, like been there, done it, check the box. That’s crazy. That’s a crazy story. That’s not right. It’s not, that’s just crazy. I had two big takeaways. Um, from that part of the discussion, one is go where clients are, you know, go to where your clients or customers are.

And number two is I am who I tell you about. Yeah, it’s funny that I don’t find myself. You define yourself. Well, and remember the thing, this is a newer concept because of social media and I can click a couple buttons and go directly to somebody before that you were who the TV told you they were the big dogs who own distribution, right?

Like, so the, the, the record labels told us who, you know, the Backstreet boys were because they would call up Vogue and Elle and people, because those were their friends. And they would text him and say, Hey, future my guys and print this piece and say these words. Right. So they dictated more and there were no middlemen.

Now there’s this great connector called social media where you and I now have become creators, the writers of our own chapters. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Um, is there a social media platform that’s more important than the other, or I’ve heard you say they’re all tools, you know, with the digital, I mean, that’s, that’s it, man.

They’re all tools, you know, it’s like, which one’s better: a hammer or screw. Yeah, it depends what you’re doing. And that’s exactly how, you know, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, you know, for me, when I look at all of those platforms, they’re nothing more than billboards. And you’re just every time I think of like, it’s just, where am I putting my billboard?

I put it on Facebook. Am I putting on Instagram? I put it on YouTube. And I realized, no matter where I put it, it doesn’t matter what matters is what the billboard says. And sometimes the billboard looks like an image. Sometimes it looks like a bunch of words. Sometimes it looks like a video and sometimes it’s a Wolf, a paid advertising baby.

Right. Like, it’s just, just, just massive billboards that just get you pumped up everywhere. Yeah. Good point. Um, the importance of captions and hashtags. Just getting into the minutia a little bit. Yeah, no, no, that was good. Um, I think, well, for speaking with Instagram, specifically with hashtags, I mean, they allow you to be found, hashtags can significantly increase the reach because now you have active people who are actually searching for stuff.

Um, I should use them way more. Like, I, I just not a focus, right? Like, but yeah, they can absolutely help, but it depends on the platform, right? Like it depends on how much reach the platform gives you for those. Um, and that, that part does change. Right? And this is why, again, I always favor paid ads because on the organic side, they can change things often.

And you know, when it’s more of a paid relationship, it’s stickier does not, things do change on that side too, but it’s a little bit, it’s hard to. Yeah. Okay. Wrapping up this part of the discussion, what advice would you give somebody starting out? They go, okay. I got to start creating content online.

Let’s say a real estate agent. What advice would you give them to tackle that? You know, maybe somebody, you know, you’re a guy who’s, you know, you’re a big personality. You’re, you’re natural at this, but somebody says I’m, you know, I’m not a natural, this is going to take a lot of effort for me to get started.

What would you give them? What advice would you give them to get started? Yeah. Good question. Um, one is I am, I am. I don’t want to say I’m, I’m natural at some things, but I’m also extremely practiced. I’ve been making ads like this for a decade, doing it every single day and working with people on it and some of the largest comp like I’ve had so much practice.

This version of me getting now is after doing that. So I don’t want anyone coming in thinking that you have to go. I literally was like, who? And here’s the other thing is like, who practices advertising? It’s not even like a thing that people practice. So like I’m extremely practiced. And then I practice something that’s uniquely practiced, which makes me look like a specimen, but it’s just like, practice it.

You know what I mean? Like anyone else, you know, so you get good things. The other thing is like, yes, I have been charismatic throughout most of my life and played sports and stuff. So I had a lot of good fortune with those things. And I don’t want to pretend like those things don’t help because they do.

However, I can give you guys a recommendation. Break everybody out. And, I’ve made it before. I’ll make it again. But I recommend that everybody try an improv class. Um, an improv class is something that’s very counterintuitive to an executive or an entrepreneur, but an improv class is where, you know, I’d show up with David and Nick and maybe there’d be some other people in the room and there’d be a moderator.

And they say, okay, you’re the husband, you’re the wife. You just walked in on them with somebody else. Now go and you start acting and they give you a scenario. You know what I mean? And that was one silly one, but it could be, Hey, you just slipped on a banana peel and this is the lawyer and this is the doctor.

What happens, go. And it forces you to tap into a side of yourself that you may have never known that you had before. I see a lot of things, as we say, all these things, like I’m not I’m, I’m not this. I’m not that it’s not true. You’re just not tapping into that because everybody’s been funny. Everybody’s been serious.

You’re just not actively trying to do it because we pretend that these things are something that we’re passively or that they’re God given. But the truth is there’s no such thing as a natural born salesperson. There’s no such thing as a natural born marketer. There’s no such thing as a natural born, like everybody who excels in their field will tell you that just because of practice and coaching in the same form that applies to everything else in life.

So that would be my tip is that I recommend that everybody has some form of improv out of their comfort zone. And then the other thing is knowing what to say whinging. No, what to say? Like I, and a lot of people, like my last ad right now, which is just crushing it for us right now, and it’s getting less than a dollar leads and maybe sometimes 20 or 30,000 of them a day.

Um, and people see it and they’re like, man, you just went up there, turn on that camera and just freestyle. It’s like, dude, I’d worked down every single word I spent the last two hours before going through it. I know exactly what I’m saying and now I’ve done it so many times I’m going through scripts.

And so, you know, and then people say, well, I don’t want to sound scripted. Well, you don’t sound scripted because you’re reading from a script. You sound scripted because you don’t know the words on the script. Have you ever seen a movie or television show? They’re always on a script, but you’re not like, are they reading a script?

I know because they remember their lines. So what people aren’t willing to do is dedicate the time to do that. Well, that’s why the results may be lacking. Sometimes you gotta do it. So know what you’re going to say? And what you want to say in an ad is real simple, identify one problem that your customer’s having, and then just.

Sounds like this, Hey, looking to move to this, you know, this area, but like you’re afraid the down payment is going to be crazy. Try these three things. Have you found that helpful click the button, less stock, simple formula that works all of the time. Hey, you want to live in a house like this, but you worry that your credit’s not good enough.

Well, here’s three things that you can do to increase your score. And like, you know, by 30 to 50 to a hundred points in the next blank blank, you know, don’t make a claim. But, you know, the premise is the same. So the easiest form of Everett advertisements is to identify the biggest pain point that a particular group or audience has.

And they’re just asked to solve it and then say, Hey, if you found this helpful and you would also like to blink, then call me as simple as that. You can spend five bucks a day on it and not see, people will see yourself on YouTube all the time, all the time. That’s such good advice. Nick, are you paying attention?

Yeah. In the time we have left, let’s talk about your business lessons learned and then we’ll wrap up with some personal development here. What would you say are some of the biggest things you’ve learned in marketing that sets you apart from your competitors? Being different is the only thing that pays.

All right. There’s no, like if you catch me and I, and like, if y’all ever see me put out. On a consistent basis. And you’re like, man, that was just like what everybody else is doing. I’d be like, I need to quit my whole, I literally spend time thinking about how we’re different, like the way we produce the way we teach.

Like if you go into our courses and stuff, like, I mean, we built out a million dollar studio just to look different and be innovative and on the front, I mean, that’s our whole thing is how do we do everything? Everything like, you know, I looked different than most marks. When I came in the marketing industry, it was only middle-aged white guys and that direct response advertising side, like, and then here was this 20 something year old.

Am I 32 now? So I was 20, I don’t know, 24 or something like that, 24 coming in. And, and I, I looked different. It was different, just different. I talk differently, right? Like it’s, you know, like, even that, like, I’m very aware, like when I’m in an interview, like my diction and how I’m coming off, my energy, if I’m close to, if I’m hyped up dah, dah, dah, it’s all different, like making sure.

And it’s all me, right? It’s all versions of me, but making sure I’m showing those sides that are different. You know, I love to come onto a stage before I speak. And I love to know the other speakers because I know how they’re going to come. So for me to stand out, all I need to do is not do what they did.

And luckily, and I, luckily we live in a world where everybody is so cookie cutter and everybody’s so great. Everybody’s see. The thing is when you’re doing it. You now have attention on you because you stand out and everybody wants standout results, but people don’t actually want to stand out. Cause then eyes are on you.

That’s where you can be judged. And people are so afraid of being judged, but you know, only when you’re out playing on the field in a spot to be judged is where you can Excel and, and, and build legacy and do incredible things. So. Yeah, that’s incredible. We, you know, one of the things we founded the greater property group on was, on what we call unique selling propositions, our uniques, what makes us different from our competitors?

Incredibly important, like you said, unique is everything right? Being different is everything, it’s super simple and chimes in there. If you don’t mind, is that that being different? It’s like, I really challenge you to think of, like, you guys want yourselves to go through, think of an offer. That’s different.

I’ve done lead generation for some of the largest franchises in the world. And I’ll tell you whenever we really get a campaign that’s working. It’s because the offer is different. You know, take a company in a franchise like McDonald’s right. And subway to the biggest franchises in the world. I think the subway is first, but they’ve been selling the same thing for a hundred years.

However long they’ve been on video or whatever it is, which is a burger and fries, subway, it’s a sandwich. So how do they keep you. They come up with new offers coming now and get the mirc coming now and get the McDouble, the McFlurry coming now and get two chicken nuggets for dah dah, dah 39 cent cheeseburger day monopoly.

Here’s a monopoly piece on our game now, but at the end of the day, what were they selling? Bogan fries. Didn’t change. It didn’t change. It’s the same thing. It’s burgers and fries made the same way, but the offer and how you put it out to people needs to be different. And so I would challenge everybody right now to say your offer is that, do you want to buy this house?

Okay, well, how good is that offer going to do right now? List with me? Because I care. Okay. Well, find a real estate agent that says they won’t care. Like, so that word is unique. Is it unique though? Is it unique? Like really pushing it isn’t unique. And if you’re like having to rationalize and justify, like, if it sounds like this, well, yeah, Steven, it actually is unique because if you really think about it, you lost, you lost, like if you’re rationalizing and justifying your uniqueness, knock it off.

You miss just doing something else again. As I stated in the beginning, the only thing that stops the needle from moving is creativity. So I have a question. I want to dive a little deeper into that. So for a lot of industries, for example, real estate, or even the marketing world, you know, if you’re, let’s say you’re a marketing consultant or you own an agency, they’re very crowded naturally.

And a lot of people are doing the same thing. Almost everyone is doing the same thing, actually. So do you have a framework or some kind of a, I hate using the word methodology, but do you have some kind of actual process that you recommend that can help people to start thinking outside of the box and getting the creative juices flowing?

Because for a lot of people, it doesn’t come naturally. That’s the problem. That’s a great point. I’m so glad you said that because people think it’s again. And if you see me spinning things off and you’re like, man, he just gets again, it’s practiced 10 years, but the best, the best part about, you know, where we live in right now today is that you can just like literally Google, like literally type in, you know, 100 best headlines.

Of all time and you will see the companies just have the most killer things of like, you know, Hey, the best offers of all time, best call to actions of all time, you know, um, most remembered ads of all the best commercials of all time. Like I just look at what they offer and then just go to the homepage of the biggest websites, right.

They probably have their best offer there because they’re trying to gain traffic and then you modify it and you make it for your industry. Another one too, if you have a service-based or abstract, make it physical, you know, people need intrinsic, tangible value. It transfers easier. It’s easier to comprehend it.

Understand. So, you know, you can give an ebook for sure, but why not print it out at staples binder and make it look all nice and say, Hey, would you like me to send you this? And they’re like, oh yeah, what’s this look on page three. It’s like this on page five. It’s like this. And then you say, we’ve got two options right now.

I can mail this to you, but that would cost me money. It would take forever to get to you. How about I just email. Even just doing that makes it 10 times more valuable than just saying there’s a magical ebook that you’ll somehow someday see. So making it tangible is a massive one to bring things to life, let them touch taste, feel it, use their senses, get their senses involved.

You know, so I would say is, is to borrow creativity from other industries. Like that would be a methodology is to look at other stuff that has nothing to do with like, you know, this is real estate. Good. Go look at the food industry. Awesome. And see what they’re doing. And then say, how can I take that principle and make it mine?

And there’s the difference is notice my brain, didn’t say, yeah, that works for food, but not for mine. That’s a loser mentality. I said, huh, that’s dope. How can I make that work for my industry? That is the whole thing. Again, a creativity challenge. That’s what everybody has a creativity challenge and you master those and you want everything.

The girl’s not talking to me. Dang. How can I get her to notice me not? And then guys like me, I saw her last boyfriend. He looks so different. Dah, dah, dah. Oh no. She’s a black guy. Oh, Billy. G’s got that done. No, it doesn’t have to, you know what I’m saying? Like it doesn’t have to be like this creativity.

How can I make myself more? How can I be more well-read and how can I put myself in better shape? How can I stand out more? How can I, you know what I mean? I, again, I can’t believe you’re saying this. This is exactly what the GPG does. That’s what we do. And we could go outside the industry and we bring, you know, tactics and pro and we bring real estate because of that, you know, we’ve been called naturally disruptive.

We do things that are so weird, you know, the people pay attention, but they, you know, they work in, you know, truth be told, you know, in Canada, especially, you know, millennials are going to drive the real estate market for the next three to five years. So you better be speaking to them, you know, grabbing attention.

It’s important, right? Like the real estate industry is so archaic. It really is. Yeah. I always say, I’m glad you said it. Cause it’s not that really, you know, it’s all aspects of real estate, right? It’s the loan side. I mean, it is just. It’s crazy. And like, you know, people are like, let’s take a stand for our commissions.

They’re getting cut because this has happened. I’m like, dude, you better adapt and get real. Let me know something, Billy Lee, sorry to cut you off. But let me tell you something. The whole problem is, you know, real estate agents and brokers, they can articulate their value. They can see what makes them different.

They don’t have the offers. And because of that, you know, people will always question their costs. So people don’t want to pay the money and want to pay commissions because you’re doing the same thing as everybody else, the same thing and to indigo even further. And this is really important. Note that some people have a hard time articulating why they’re different because they’re not in there.

And this is important. And I want everybody to really hear me here is don’t forget. You can always acquire more skills to make yourself more valuable. And this is the biggest block with humanity. We act as if. Well, I am just this, just like I talked about in the beginning, it’s like, I am not funny. I am not creative.

I am not entertaining. Well, I love the fact that you can tell yourself the truth, but tell yourself the, even more of the truth, which is, I am not funny yet, but I will be after I practiced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I am not done yet, but I will be done up. You know, there’s a stupid saying that everybody says, which is, you know, just a double down on, on, on your strengths and forget your weaknesses.

Now that’s a great saying. If you have strength, you gotta get strength. First, you got to get like you, can’t just kind of like, like, oh, I’m just going to double down. Do you have strength? Like, and to give you an idea of what a strength is. You know, doctors, they go to school for 12 years and do a residency for three to get their strength.

Their strength comes after 15 years. So if you haven’t gone to any sacrifice, a monetary investment to get your skills up, I promise you you’re getting paid exactly what you deserve mind blown. I hope everybody’s taking notes because this is a, this is, this is game changing. I got one question that we haven’t really touched on.

If you don’t Dave, you got something to go for it. You talked about getting your first client and how it was kind of easy. And for any sales professional, it is easy. The first client, you can literally stumble. You can fall backwards into your first client, where it gets tough is being able to repeat that success.

So for someone who may be just a one-off, a real estate agent who wants to build a team or a one-off marketing consultant who actually wants to build an agency, what do you think is the most valuable step they can take to start learning how to scale that skill and be able to repeat that success? A hundred percent being able to acquire customers systematically, because if not, you’re not in control of your growth.

Like when you’re, depending on referrals, what I hear is you don’t have, like, when people are like tout, like, Hey, I grew this business and I, and I’m not even using the advertising that makes me want to run the other way, because I know they have no way of seeing. Cause if I told him awesome, double your business right now, they wouldn’t even know where to start.

It was like, okay, well, I already tapped out my requests. There’s nothing to do. Like if you look at fortune 100 companies, like the biggest companies in the world, you’ll see their top line, which is like billions and billions and billions of dollars in sales. And then right next to it is their advertising, which is billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Like it’s, it’s a part of the game to success. People don’t realize that, which is why I think statistically four out of a hundred companies in the U S ever make it to a million dollars annually in revenue, which doesn’t even mind you saying profit or anything. That’s a 4% success rate getting there.

Meaning 96 people are wrong and I bet you all of those 96 people don’t advertise. Yeah. Good advice. Good advice, man. We do like to keep it real here on the run GPG podcast. So what’s the worst business decision you’ve ever made? I’m trying to figure it out. And it’s a, it’s a thing that, I think it was really ignorant.

It came from a place of arrogance. And the more successful you become the more you realize you don’t know every single day I obsess about how much, I don’t know, man. It’s incredible how much I have to learn. I feel like I’m just getting started. I feel like day one, I’m up. I’m a massive student.

I’m obsessed with paying for help. You know, when I didn’t have cash, it was like, I’m just. Seven bucks. And let me see if I can read up and get it. Now that I have cash, I said, I’m gonna call the fucking author and have them come spend a day with me. And I go fast. You know, I don’t have time to waste. So I buy, I buy my fucking time and I buy it a lot.

The most ignorant thing I’ve ever done is try and figure stuff out by myself. And I mean that, like, I, I it’s cost me money. You know, I bought a short story. One of the first websites I ever did. Platform thing. I ended up paying 25,000 bucks for it, because it was the first tech company I talked to and they gave me a quote and this was years, years, years ago.

And in my, I didn’t have that. I borrowed the money from friends and stuff. I had no money. And I realized that I could have got that platform for free. It was a free thing and they just pay me for overcharging on customization. But like, how would I know that I didn’t know that like, and it’s just like most people and people will relate to this.

If you’ve ever built a website or gone to, and it was your first time and that roadie in dance, you will overpay for everything. You go to a car and you’ve never done it before. You will overpay for everything you go into real estate and you’ve never done it before. You’ll overpay. Here’s a great one, everybody here, because we’ve got a lot of real estate professionals.

If you go by the house today. On being on the backend, all the stuff. Are you going to pay the same as Joe schmuck? Exactly. Meaning there’s an immense extreme, massive amount of value on expert help. Only a fool tries to figure out themselves. I was that fool. I stopped being that fool. And, here we are, you know, eight figures annually, a hundred, 3000 students, 75 countries.

And, you know, as I’m seeing, coming up on I think, 800 million times, and that’s awesome. Okay. To piggyback on that, what’s the best business advice you’ve ever received. Ask for help. I’ll just flip it. I’d be like, no. Nah, I think, I look at best business vices, always relative in, I mean that, in the sense of like, it depends on the problem that you’re trying to solve.

So I can say I have the best piece of advice. I have some advice for that time. You know, when I was scaling up, I had a coach, a guest, Cameron, Harold. He was a CEO of one, 800, got junk. When they went from two to a hundred million, he gave me great advice at times, another guy, mine, Jim bunch. He gave me some help on some, you know, mentally personal friendship stuff.

Like, it just depends on what chapter in the book. Right? Like, I mean, I, I look from everything. I came to this podcast, even though I’m the guest today I go, what kind of learning from y’all. Okay. I’m watching you set up. Okay. How y’all move. How do you guys communicate with each other? Like I’m looking at all of it, so, okay.

A couple of fun ones. What do you do also ? I do have the best piece of business advice because there’s a lot of people who I really like. Books like that are the cheat codes of life. And they really like all the answers you’re looking for in a freaking book, but I’m a C student who hates to read.

So like one thing that helped me read for anybody who’s struggling or like getting that learning phase is like, don’t read for fun, read for specific problems, like really ask yourself. What’s the biggest thing that you’re having a roadblock in your business? Like, well, I need more customers. Cool. Read a book on getting customers, because it’s always interesting why?

Because you can apply it right away. And it changes everything forever. Once I did that, I read now because I’m a solution-based reader. I’m not like that, I’m just going to go on inside of me today. Nah, I will play XBox over that every single time. But if I need to figure out something, I will go to the source.

That’s awesome. We got it. It’s interesting. We got one, probably one of the most read books in the real estate industry. It has never split the difference by Chris’ boss. Yeah. And we got him coming up, I think next week or the week after or whatever. So it’s going to be really interesting to apply. You know what he talks about, not books about negotiating and real estate.

I think that’s the book. I know it’s going to be a lot of fun. I think it’s probably one of the most read books and you know, the state, I don’t know. Okay. A couple of fun ones, Billy, what do you do for fun? X-Box I will. I’m going to curse. So everybody plug your ears. If you want to see me with an XBox I will get up.

I see him as you mean Madden. You see me in two K. See me in call of duty, a tag name as the cuties cuties. Can you see us out there? We don’t want these problems. So he’s a gamer. I like it. Do you have a daily routine as an entrepreneur? No. I run on a schedule. My, my I’m really scheduled. I had two assistants every minute, but like my morning routine, I’m, my morning routine is contract.

Like it contradicts all the rest of them. I like to get on my phone and check my emails. I’m like ready to get into them, excited about what we’re doing. I want to jump in with my team. Like, I wanna, I wanna, like, I want to jump in. Like, I, I want to, like, I’m a, it doesn’t rattle me. It’s like, you know, people are like, ah, you just wake up and you start putting out fires.

Well, shit, you better take a look. Why are there fires and your email, why are there fires like what’s going on? Where a company where you only have email fires. I don’t even get emailed anymore. My team gets emailed. I took my shit off everything. I didn’t get an email. So like me, I like to dive in and see the stats.

And matter of fact, it’s even my workouts. Like I’ve been hardcore on this fitness journey and literally my schedule, my workouts for two weeks. Yeah, because I don’t want to waste time in the morning when I get to jump and beat up on it and all, you know, different countries are up and like, you know, like, yeah, I look at time zones and the stock market.

Like, you know, there’s just things happening. Like I want to get busy. I’m excited to attack that. So, that, and then, I work out two 30 to three 30 interesting parts of the day. And then I usually write down the meetings at the end of the day. And I just spend time with my daughter and my girl.

Nice. I’m so glad you said that. Like, I, I can’t resist either. I mean, I’m checking email at 5:00 AM. I, I, I, I don’t know how you can, if you run a company or business. Yeah. It’s fun. I don’t know how, like, you know, people say you gotta like, you know, black out for three hours and meditate and do all this gratitude stuff.

I think so. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean like it’s bad, right? Like, cool. Like I have made it tells you your thing. I think I, I do definitely believe this, but yeah, like at the same time, I don’t think yet I had a kid. I was, I was speaking to the vet and he’s like, Hey, Billy Gene, let me ask you a question.

He’s just like, man, like, you know, I just I’m in the grind stage. And I was like, I need to focus, but like too, should I just like, get rid of my XBox and I turned around, I said, look, man, you never get rid of your, X-Box

just be more efficient with your time and get things done. You know what I mean? Like whoop game, like, you know, like three, four times a week and weeknights, but I’m done with my stuff first. Right? Like you set your priorities together and I’ve already spent time on my daughter, my daughter’s in bed. You know what I mean?

So when my daughter is up, I’m not playing video games, I’m playing with her. Like during the day I’m focused on my company and what the moves I can make at night time. That’s my time to, you know, wind a little bit game, a little bit cupcake and all those things. Okay. I like it. Okay. So here’s, here’s one that’s going to really make you think.

Who is Billy Gene? If you could have dinner with any three people in history, past or present, would they be, and why? I just have one right now and it’s Gordon Ramsay because my, my, my, my neck he’s, he’s a guy looking like I don’t even look at anyone in digital marketing space and most of our peers and like, we’ll chat about getting better and helping, like, my brain is like a syndicated television shows and pilots in the entrepreneur space and just absolutely dominate the space.

It’s just a bunch of old white guys right now. We’re about to come in and blow their shit up. I’ll tell you guys now I’ll call it right here. It will be a Netflix Hulu plus we’ll have the number one shows in multiple, not just one. So that’s what we’re and Gordon Ramsey’s done that. So he’s the guy. I would have it with him, and I want to understand this process, his team in everything he does to create that much velocity and how we leverage all that brand to then put it out in other companies and ventures.

I’m a big Gordon Ramsey fan, but you gotta pick two more though, dude, you got to pick two more. I think just, you know, I guess I go shout out to my grandparents, you know, rest in peace, go say what happened. Just like, yo, what you’ve been up to because, you know, Hey, listen man, that question, we get the craziest answers sometimes, you know, we get very interested.

So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s hard for me. Like I don’t do well in those because to me it’s like, if there’s that person, like, I’m going to call them, you know? Like, I’m like, if I don’t and I am, that doesn’t mean like, I’m so cool. Like if I don’t know them, I’m going to find a way to do it and I’ll pay them.

Like, you know what I mean? If I’m burning that much, it’s like, no, I’m going to find someone who knows I’m going to pay them. Like I say, Gordon Ramsey. Because I actively like figuring out how to get in front of him. You know? So like, I dunno. And then D and then the dead part, like in the past, I just know so little about history that I just wouldn’t have a good answer.

Like I hated history. It’s like my number one class. I couldn’t stand it. And not that you can’t learn a lot from it and disrespect him, but like, I, I had no, no, I couldn’t name anyone. Cause I don’t know anyone. Well, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get Gordon Ramsey on the run GPG podcast and we’ll have you as a.

Yeah, I’ll set it up. I’ll make it happen. Um, does that mean you’re kicking me out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And you referenced books, you wrap it up with two questions here. One is the books, a game-changing book record. Is there, is there a book you read that, you know, kind of changed the trajectory of the way you thought about business or changing, scaling up by Verne Harnish?

Yeah. And I say the biggest takeaway from there is that there’s massive tactics. I just left with the fundamental understanding that no business is different and in my business, right. I like marketing. So I see every different type of business industry ever. And it’s so funny because we go through these things where, you know, entrepreneurship is a lonely sport in the world.

So we have these moments where we think the problems and situations that we have are just us. Well, my customer is different, well, not our product. And it’s just. Crap. The book is so objective and so spot on and that I’ve seen it, you know, applied to the different disciplines and business throughout different industries.

It’s just, no business is different and like, you can really get to a place. I can’t wait for the 50 year old version of me. I’m 32 next 18 years. I can’t wait to talk to that guy and see what he knows and understands about business and way. It’s so simple. Not easy but simple because it’s so yeah. So no business is unique at all.

Not a single problem as unique. Yeah. Like that. D a a D have you read the hard thing about hard things? You need to read that one, if you’d like to scale it up, you’ll really like that one. I thought it was hard to think about other things. Okay. Think about hard things. That one was one that I think you dig.

Um, okay. So when all is said and done, just to piggyback off that when all is said and done, what do you want to be known for? I know that the word legacy is thrown around a lot, but empowering, empowering people with less than, you know, I make, we made a decision years ago to make our stuff really affordable.

Like I sold all my courses for 31 bucks. I button them up, our stuff now that we sell like 60 bucks really, really cheap in a world where people talk about high ticket prices. No, I want to go cheap to make it affordable as I want people in the roughest, worst parts of the world that are completely hopeless to get their hands on our training.

And I want to empower them with skills, financially, and marketing business wise so that they can create a better version of the world for themselves, their family, et cetera, is real simple. So if I can do that and I die, you know, 10 million students later, and they were empowered and got smart and were able to have more choices and help more people.

That’s awesome. Okay. And where can the people find you? Where do you want people to go and check out what you do to your company? Follow us on Instagram, Billy Gene is marketing. Listen to our podcasts. Billy Gene is marketing, offends the internet and buys my shit. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us today, Billy absolutely dropped some marketing science, branding bonds.

He killed it. Very profound insight into the current state of online marketing. Great to get your perspective, really appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me.