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What's your why? Yeah, so my why

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has, I have two whys and I think each of them operate really powerfully inside of me.

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My first why is something that came from my mother and it's to be a champion of the underdog.

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So for my entire life I have always rooted for the underdog. In many cases I have been in some ways

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an underdog and I've always felt an incredible draw to the underdog, the voiceless, the folks

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that are on the wrong side of the tracks. And so for 20 years I was a journalist and I was always

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drawn to the poor communities, to the communities where people were struggling and to understand

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their stories and to try to faithfully represent those stories and try to bring greater awareness

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to what they were struggling with. So that was my draw as a journalist and the reason I came to

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realize, oh and then when I started my business and I was serving small businesses I tended to

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drift towards the small business, the underserved business, the business that I could make the

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biggest impact in the fastest way on. And the reason I do this is because of my mother. My mother

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was an inner city school teacher in Philadelphia teaching art, an underdog subject for underdog

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students. And so my why has been to be a champion of the underdog. But then the other why that I've

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come to realize more recently is there's been like a very common thread through my entire life,

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my entire professional life, which is I love to learn and then I love to share what I learn with

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others. I don't like hoarding knowledge. I like giving it away freely and generously. And so

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being a journalist, that's what you do. You go in the world and you learn about the world and then

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you share it. And being a teacher, an instructor, a coach, a trainer, same idea. I take really tough

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topics, in this case, marketing, AI powered marketing, and I simplify it and then I share it.

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And I just have this very strong instinct to learn and share. And so that really is about

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my grandfather's. One of my grandfathers was a professional soccer coach in La Liga in Spain

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and the other one was also a school teacher. He taught physics in central high school in

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Philadelphia, the second oldest public high school in the country. And so this long line of coaching

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and teaching has manifested in me as someone who loves to learn and wants to share what I

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learn with others. Yeah. And you know, it's a statement that I say very often, this life

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isn't really about me. It's not about us. We don't have these experiences and the challenges

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and the successes in order to keep them to ourselves. They are to be shared and you're

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doing exactly just that. Serving an underserved community, helping small businesses that are often

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left behind. And as you mentioned, not so many of those small businesses have websites and

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that's time consuming within itself. You know, it's just trying to get up a website and just

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having that, you know, big audacious idea and not really knowing what to do with it, Dan, has probably

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been the least challenging of it all than getting a business off ground. So it's imperative and it's

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a need for someone like you to actually help those individuals to move forward and find success in a

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small business because there is success. So I definitely appreciate that and thank you for

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sharing your why. How did you get started? Yeah. Well, there's two answers to that question. I'm

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going to start with how I got started as a business owner and it started with me being fired.

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You know, like so many visionary entrepreneurs, there's really only one person who would ever

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hire you and it's ourselves. We're driven, but we also drive people crazy. And so, you know, I was

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a very high level journalist working at NPR in the public radio station in Miami and lost my job and

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had to kind of start over and reinvent. Journalism is a really challenged industry and there just was

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no job in Miami where I was living at the time that was a fit. And so first I said, you know, I was

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mid-career, I was in my late 30s and I said, you know, I'm really good at storytelling,

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journalistic storytelling. I want to start doing business storytelling. So I want to tell the

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stories of businesses. And so I started asking people, hey, I want to tell the story of businesses.

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And they're like, yeah, that's called marketing. I'm like, okay, marketing. And I like wrote

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marketing down on my pad. And then I said, but you know, the future is digital, right? So I want to

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do marketing, but online. You're like, yeah, that's called digital marketing. I'm like, okay,

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digital marketing. So literally I was that clueless. And so I started telling people, yeah,

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I want to learn digital marketing. This will take me a few weeks, right? I'm a smart guy. Anyway,

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I realized pretty quickly after I went down the YouTube rabbit hole that digital marketing is a

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pretty complex field. So I said, you know what, I could really use like a bootcamp, kind of like

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coding bootcamp, but for digital marketing. And I couldn't find it. This was back in 2013. And so I

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had to learn the hard way. And so the initial inspiration for starting my business was the

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terrible pain that I experienced trying to learn this thing myself. And this goes back to that idea

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of my why, which is I want to share, I want to learn and share what I learned with others. Like

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seven years later, I started to figure this all out and it felt, you know, like at first I was

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able to get a job in PR and then I took on a marketing role while in that job. And then

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I joined a startup as a head of growth. And so that was like a marketing role. And I kind of

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like tripped my way forward and, you know, and then I started teaching because I like to teach

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what I want to learn and kind of figured it out. And over the course of like seven years, got to

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like really understand marketing, but not only marketing in the way it's taught at the MBA

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programs, I've never actually taken a formal marketing class, but marketing is the way it's

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done at the small business level. And I began to build my own methodology that is, borrows from a

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lot of what I just learned from the ground and some of the ideas that I've later been exposed to in

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marketing. And we call it the lead building system and it's a simplified approach to marketing.

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And I said, my God, if I had had this, when I started my career transition, it would have taken

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what took seven years and compressed it into seven weeks. And so that's now what I share with

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business owners. So they say like, look, you need to understand marketing if you want to grow your

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company, if you want to scale, if you want to take this from, you know, a business that you run and

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it takes all your time to one where you have enough revenue to hire people and grow, you need to

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learn marketing. Now, how are you going to learn marketing? You can learn it the hard way, or you

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can learn it with us. Right. And so that's sort of become the story that we tell about why we do

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what we do and how it helps others. And what's interesting is as I went deeper into the field of

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marketing, I came to realize that what I really love is entrepreneurship. I love being a business

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owner dedicated to helping other business owners grow through marketing. And it became, for me,

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the learning became much more about how to grow a business and marketing became secondary to that or

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supplemental to that. So, so that's really become my second professional love. My first professional

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love, my first love was journalism. And then my second professional love has been entrepreneurship,

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how to build a business. And I'm dedicated to helping small businesses build theirs.

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You know, and that's, that's, it's, it's a, it's a goal that I know that you've reached 20,000 times.

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And looking forward to that million, but you spoke about learning experiences. And I'd like to know,

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what was your most significant learning experience? Yeah. Well, the school of hard knocks.

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You know, I'm a huge believer, one of the core values, the number one core value of

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this hack is learn by doing. Yes. And there is no replacement for lived experience.

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There's another saying that I love, which is action creates information. So if you have an idea,

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act on it and learn and be prepared to fail or even fail gloriously, because in that failure

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is the learning. And, you know, I went to Princeton and a lot of what Princeton teaches is theoretical.

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And I have dedicated myself to practical learning in the core, in the courses that we teach, it's

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all practical, it's all application because the research shows in my experience confirms that the

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learning is in the doing. Yeah. And so that's the learning experience. And I'm going to add to that,

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which is you have to give yourself grace if you're going to take this approach, because you're going

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to make mistakes and you have to accept that you're going to make mistakes and give yourself grace.

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And this is honestly, this is the mindset component of learn by doing is you need to test and learn.

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And you need to fail gloriously and you need to make those failures productive by learning from

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them. And you need to give yourself permission to fail and you need to be patient with yourself and

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with others when they fail, because it's in the failing that we are learning. And the only true

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failure is a failure where you don't learn from it. Absolutely. And so that is like the corollary to

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that. It's not easy. It's easier to have someone just tell you the roadmap and to follow those steps.

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But the world has become so complex and nuanced that I don't really think that that's a viable

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path forward for most people. You just have to kind of take your knocks and learn along the way.

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Now, the one other caveat I'll say is there's, I call it like productive failure and unproductive

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failure. Yeah. Random acts of marketing where you throw spaghetti against the wall and hope some of

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it will stick is not constructive. Having a strategic approach to your marketing and failing,

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as you will often in your campaigns, despite that strategic approach, that's constructive. So same

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thing with growing a business. You want to have a strategy. You want to have a vision. You want to

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have a game plan. And then, you know, you want to recognize that the plan is probably not going to

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work and you're going to have to adapt and evolve. But, but the key is learning as a business

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owner. Learning enough to have a structured framework, having guidance and mentors and frame

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and coaching to help you have productive failure. And then when you fail to learn from it and build

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on it.

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Makes all the sense in the world. And he said it, learn by doing and give yourself grace and have

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patience with yourself. And I believe as a, as a entrepreneur or a new business owner, that those are

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things we don't think about. We just start doing and maybe not even learning from that. As you

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stated, there's the productive and unproductive marketing. And I honestly can say for myself, I've

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done both. And the productive part was never do the unproductive again. So I definitely understand

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that. And there was, you know, there's usually a question that I asked that you beat me to. And

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those, those tips that you just gave for any entrepreneur, for all the audience that is, are

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listening, if you have to rewind this back, rewind that back, because those are the things that are

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going to keep the business and its longevity. Those are also going to be things that don't burn you

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out so soon, right? Which is usually focusing on perfection instead of production and trying to get

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it right before you actually do it. So definitely, definitely. And I have, it's, it's a random

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question off the top of my head, because now I'm thinking about the next decade. What digital

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marketing principles do you think will stay essential in the next decade? Yeah. In the next

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decade, in the past 2000, 5,000 years, and in the future, as long as we're still a species, which is

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business is human to human, marketing is human to human, intermediated by technology, but not

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replaced by it. And so with digital marketing, and then especially now with AI-powered marketing,

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business owners are completely losing sight of how human an endeavor business is. It's one of our

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most intimate human activities is to trade value. And just never forget that. And so as you're

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thinking about how do I use AI to automate things? How do I use AI to do things faster, more cheaply,

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more efficiently? If you lose sight that there's a human being who is your customer, and that they

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value and treasure your personal story, your personal motivation, your why, your vision,

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things that no robot or AI chat bot could ever provide, then you're not going to succeed.

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And think about the businesses that you know and love best. And you know the owner. You know their

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story. You know why they're doing what they're doing, and you support them, even if it's more

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expensive or a little takes you a little out of your way. Most of us are small business owners. 99%

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of businesses are small businesses. And the core of that activity is this human-to-human interaction.

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Now, do you need to suffer? Do you need to work 100 hours a week? Do you need to do things

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inefficiently? No. That's where AI can help. That's where just good strategy can help. That's where a

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great team can help. But recognizing and remembering that your core activity is building and leading a

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team that takes care of other people, your customers, and provides them with something that

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they can't get anywhere else, that's where success lies. Not just financially, but just morally,

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ethically, and spiritually. And you know, one of the things that I overhear in conferences, networking,

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the thought that AI is going to take away the relationship aspect of things and not having that

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human-to-human contact as much anymore. Have you been approached with that statement or have heard

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that as well? Yeah, it's, there's a lot of financial incentive to promote that stupid idea.

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Largely by tech bros, you know, men who don't value human relationships. And it's stupid. It's a stupid

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idea. It's manifestly not true. Like, why would anyone think that things that have been true for

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time and memorial across every culture? Like, how do we connect as human beings? Through stories.

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And that's true across every culture in every time. And the stories that people care about are why do

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you do what you do and why does it matter? And so just focus there and then leverage AI to help you

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get noisy about it, to help you say that in more channels and in more ways, to be creative in ways

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that maybe you wouldn't have thought of. Use it as a partner in getting that out more widely. But if

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you're not telling that authentic story digitally mediated, whether it's social media, your website,

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email, you're gonna, you're not gonna stand out. You're gonna just be one more me too business. And

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by the way, like, if an AI bot can do it, then another, your competitor can build the same bot to

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do exactly the same thing. And the chances are they're going to be better at it than you are.

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And so I definitely think that there's a strong financial motivation, starting with the largest

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tech companies in the history of the world, to de-emphasize the human component of business. And

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I think it's a dumb idea. And you should be very skeptical of it. That's not to say to be, to not

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leverage the most powerful productive technology, the most powerful technology for increased

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productivity in the history of the world. You'd also be completely nuts to not leverage AI. So I'm

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not saying it's just understand what AI can and should do, and not have it try to replace you.

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Absolutely. I love that.

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And then one last thing I'll say is, what I actually love, love about AI is it's actually

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helping us define our humanity. Like, what is distinctly human about us? And I'll tell you

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what's distinctly human about us. It's our personal history and our personal motivation. Like,

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really the core of your podcast around vision, no AI can provide that. No AI has lived the life

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you've lived, the experiences you've had, the influences and the people who've shaped you.

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That's the human part of marketing. And you have to get really good at telling that part,

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and then leveraging AI to help you do it more efficiently and get noisy and maybe tell it in

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more creative ways.

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Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking

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forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get

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more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to

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participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent

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time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.