Marketing on a shoestring — Carlos Gil on what actually moves the needle for B2B

Carlos Gil dives deep into the realities of modern marketing, sharing his journey from losing his banking job in 2008 to launching multiple businesses and becoming the US Brand Evangelist for GetResponse. He breaks down the widespread myth of the "cheat code" to success, emphasizing that even the most expensive advice is useless if you're not willing to put in the hard work and actually execute. A major theme of the episode is the necessity of authentic connection in the digital age. Carlos highlights the premise of his best-selling book, "The End of Marketing": people buy from people. While AI tools like ChatGPT are incredible for ideation and outlining content, founders and sales professionals must still be the face of their brand to cultivate real relationships. Finally, Carlos shares insights on when and how to pivot. From a COVID-era mask business that capitalized on viral TikTok content to a brick-and-mortar sneaker store, he highlights the importance of recognizing market shifts early and acting on them. He leaves listeners with a powerful mindset shift about managing fear, picking the right business partners, and prioritizing family over failing ventures.

Discussed in this episode

Why there is no overnight success or secret cheat code to marketing outside of hard work.
The frustrating reality of founders paying top dollar for coaching but failing to execute the advice.
How to effectively use AI tools like ChatGPT for content ideation without losing your authentic voice.
The core philosophy that people buy from people, making personal advocacy crucial for brand building.
Recognizing the exact moments when a business is declining and you need to pivot your strategy.
The story of how an A/B test on TikTok led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in mask sales.
The harsh realities of brick-and-mortar retail where the owner is the last person to get paid.
Overcoming the worst type of fear, which is the fear you anticipate before taking action.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Intro: There are no cheat codes
3:15 — Carlos's origin story in social media
6:30 — Why founders pay for advice and don't execute
10:45 — Using ChatGPT for content creation
14:20 — The Outlaw Masks pandemic pivot
18:10 — A/B testing content on TikTok
22:30 — Transitioning to a sneaker store
27:15 — Knowing when it's time to pivot
32:00 — Evolution of leadership and self-validation
37:45 — Anticipated fear is the worst fear

Key takeaways

There is no marketing cheat code; hard work is the only shortcut.
Use AI for heavy lifting, but keep your face and voice authentic.
People relate to and buy from people, not faceless corporate brands.
Pivot immediately when you see the writing on the wall; don't wait.
The worst type of fear is the fear you build up and anticipate.

Transcript

And a lot of the coaches that are giving advice and leading people down this path of believing, well, if you pay me the 10 grand or the 20 grand, I'm going to give you the cheat code. And spoiler alert, guys, there is there's no cheat code out there. None. Besides doing hard work.

Welcome back to another episode of The Revenue Reimagined podcast. I am no longer Dale's EA. I am back to myself as Adam, and we have with us today Carlos Gil, who is a digital marketing expert, a keynote speaker, author of a best-selling book, The End of Marketing, has over 15 years of corporate social media and digital marketing experience. Currently serves as a US Brand Evangelist for GetResponse where he drives brand awareness and forms strategic partnerships.

And I've been told that we cannot leave this show without talking about sneakers. Which means I might need to go bring my 13-year-old in from the other room, but we'll get there. Carlos, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for joining us.

What's going on, guys? You seem like two fun gentlemen to record a podcast with. One fun gentleman and Dale. One good gentleman and my EA.

So, Carlos, man, I've been following you for a while, everything from like from social media world to job rule, to to mass, to sneakers, to NFTs, actually I bought one of your NFTs originally back in the day as you're going through the process. So, uh, yeah, it's all good, it's all good. Hey, we're all in experimentation mode, like we're all learning, going through the process. Um, so tell me a little bit about that origin story like once you, as you're going into your own organization, as you're going through the process, like, what made you be like, I'm going to go, it could be starting the store with the sneakers, it could be starting your, you know, social media stuff.

It could be starting the mass company during Covid, like, what, what was the origination of some of these new businesses that you generated? So, you know, I'd be remiss if I don't if I don't tell you my origin story going back to the early days of when I got started working, right? So, I come from a line of entrepreneurial parents. I grew up in South Florida.

My mom and dad are Cuban immigrants, and since I was a young kid, I always saw my parents work their asses off. And developing strong work ethic is something that, uh, I have practiced and refined throughout, uh, the years. Uh, every time I've gotten knocked down, I find ways to get back up, uh, which is, you know, what the goal of American dream is all about, constantly keep keep hustling, keep grinding. My dad, since I was since I was a little boy, he always talked to me about climbing the ladder of success.

And it's funny because you mentioned some of those key highlights that stand out on my resume. I named best-selling book and speaking engagements and doing all these cool things, whether it's, you know, for my own business or other people's businesses. But what I've come to realize is the ladder of success doesn't end. Like, even when you hit that peak where you feel like, oh, man, like I just accomplished a really cool goal.

I started a business and that business generated a million bucks. Or I wrote a best-selling book, like you still got to keep moving forward. You know, there's levels to success. So, uh, to kind of summer summarize for you, I've worked in digital and social media marketing since 2008.

I started my career at a very young age working in financial services and banking and right around 2008 when I got laid off in the banking industry is when I turned to social media at a time where I was starting up my own business. I was super green. I didn't know anything about running a business. I didn't know about scaling a business of my own.

I I didn't know about marketing, much less digital and social marketing and just to be completely transparent, I figured it out. Through trial and error and in trial and error there's a lot of pissing people off. It's spamming people. It's it's self-promoting.

It's you rubbing people the wrong way. Like everything and anything, like honestly, Dale, like I'm very surprised that you've hung around with me throughout this log of my journey. Like I was going to say, damn, it sounds like you've been stalking me for over a decade. You know, but it's cool, but when he saw your name on the schedule, he's like, that's the guy that I wake up every morning to see what he's doing.

You know, I was I was doing one of these one of these podcasts other day and it was with a guy that was like highly critical of my work back around like a decade ago, 2014, 15 era, when Snapchat was really hot. And back then, I had this like over the top, larger than life personality. I alienated a lot of people. I I built a fan base, you know, I hate using that term.

But I loosely built a following in a fan base, but at the same time, other people I alienated and pissed off just because of the gimmick, the persona that a lot of people don't like behind social media creation. So, you know, that's a very long way of saying like, it's been evolution for me, 15 years now in this game of social media marketing. I have worked for different brands. I I'm an open book.

I will tell you anything and everything that you need to know about, uh, growing and selling and monetizing using digital mediums because at the end of the day, 99% of the people don't implement half of what it is I tell them or half of what they consume on the internet or half of what they coaches tell them. Like so many times, uh, people have come to me and they've said like, hey, I paid this coach 10 grand and I didn't learn a damn thing from him. And I will literally tell you everything that I can possibly tell you that I know that will work, you don't have to pay me a dime. And the reality is that if you don't go out and execute, then it doesn't matter whether you pay for or got the advice for free.

So, you know, I hope that answer your question but that's a whole whole way of saying I've done a lot of cool things and here I am chatting with you guys now to talk about it. That's an incredible place to double click though, right? So, we work with startups all the time who pay us a lot of money, um, to provide guidance, advice, strategy, and we also execute as well, like we physically will show you how to do it. We will do it.

And then we leave and then they turn around and don't do it. And then they come back and they're like, well, why why we we haven't grown. Well, did you do A? Did you do B?

Did you do C? Well, no. why is it? And you've been doing this longer than I have.

Why are people willing to pay whatever, 10 grand, 20 grand, free, get all the advice and then not implement it? Because I think this is not only our world but my my stepson is doing very much the same thing with like Amazon FBA. Like you see this everywhere, right? Like, here's the advice, but I'm good.

The easiest way to summarize it is that people are looking for the easy way to success, the easy path. And um, you know, this might sound cliche, but there is no overnight success. There is no easy path. Like if there was an easy path, everyone would have already done it, right?

Everyone would be multi- multi-millionaires. Uh, but there's no easy path. You have to figure things out. You have to actually do the work.

You know, I I I explain this to my son who just graduated from high school. You know, I'm 40 years old, right? I grew up in this era of Nintendo when we had the cheat codes. And, you know, back in the day, there would be these books that you would buy that would have a cheat code of how to get through a game.

And I feel almost like there's these parallels in online marketing and a lot of the coaches that are giving advice and leading people down this path of believing, well, if you pay me the 10 grand or the 20 grand, I'm going to give you the cheat code. And spoiler alert, guys, there is there's no cheat code out there. None. Besides doing hard work.

Now, that being said, you can pay agencies to do work for you. You can outsource the heavy lifting. But in terms of, I'm going to give you X and you're just going to make me a multi-millionaire doing, you know, I don't know, Amazon FBA, like at the end of the day, you still got to learn the systems, learn the products, know how this all works. Otherwise, you're just going to be taken advantage of.

I think that's what happens in this internet culture. Like I every single day, I read on Facebook, right? I've been tapped into the internet marketing space for 15 years. Every single day, I go on Facebook and I read people getting taken advantage of or scammed and they paid this person and that person didn't deliver results.

And again, it's because that person they took advantage of you. They saw you want the cheat code. You want to take the magic pill that's going to lead to all this success when in reality, if you just take the longer path to just learn, okay, email marketing, social media marketing, content creation. If you just learn how to do this, then, you know what?

Eventually, you're going to see some results. And then and I'll tell you guys this real quick. Before I turn it over to you. I I I'm a big fan of chat GPT.

I'm a big fan of using AI to outsource where you can outsource, right? And I'm not talking about using AI or chat GPT to do all of the work for you. But I'm seeing this common theme where people want to just share other people's content and not create content on their own. And going back to the premise of my book, the The End of Marketing, the whole premise of of The End of Marketing is that people relate to people.

People buy from people. And if you can turn everyday people like you, Dale, putting you on the spot here, if if you can turn people into advocates, then that advocacy is going to lead to opportunities. Like, I right now, I'm speaking on your podcast, there are people that are listening to me that otherwise would have never known who Carlos Gill is. Well, that's a result of building a relationship with you, Dale, over the course of many years, right?

And I like to use this analogy that when you are creating content and building a brand on social media, which takes time, once again, doesn't happen overnight. Because there's no easy path to success. It's like harvesting a garden. And you're planting seeds.

And every one of these followers that you connect with, every one of these LinkedIn connections, they are they are seeds in your garden. And over time, by building those relationships and nurturing them, that garden, that harvest is going to grow. And from that growth, will result in business deals, it'll result in content opportunities, podcast opportunities, speaking engagements. You name it, but you got to start with creating the content.

And that's something that holds so many people back. So, going back to chat GPT and AI, it's making the art of content creation easier than ever. I I just shared this example with a friend yesterday who's in the insurance business. I told him, hey, man, tell me like in one sense, what it is that you do and one product that you sell.

All right, cool. I went on chat GPT. I typed in that product. And I asked chat chat GPT, create a whole calendar of videos that this person can create that are 15 seconds in length.

All he needs to do is read off of a script. And he was like, man, it's too much work. Well, how's that how's that too much work? All you have to do is read, dude.

Like, the AI is pretty damn good, but it's not going to do everything for you. And again, people relate to people. People buy from people. So they can see you, they can hear you, they can they can they can feel that connection with you that they don't feel with AI.

Just use AI as a tool, but still do the work. So frustrating. I I I it's the laziness factor blows my mind. Uh, like I don't want to read it.

I mean, yeah, yes, there's some tools out there that I believe can like make uh, like, but I I can't. I I just can't. Carlos, you've been through a lots of different uh, businesses, transformations, processes. When do you know or when does your, when do you like flip it and be like, you know what, this really isn't working?

Because a lot of people will just run themselves into the ground, right? How do you know what time it is to reinvent yourself and then what do you do after you start reinventing? So like, give them like a couple of steps on like, just do this. I think of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, like there's a lot of stuff we talked about doing, but when do you know when to get out?

That's actually a really good question. And I think that's actually a good bridge in terms of over the last couple of years how I have how I've pivoted, right? So you had mentioned early on a mask business. So in 2020, when the world completely, you know, went to shit, COVID put everything on hold.

I found myself out of work, right? I found myself out of work, like serious work, not, hey, I got laid off and I'm going to go apply for some jobs on LinkedIn and get a job out of work, but everything is shut down. There's no conferences, there's no consulting gigs. Everyone's just like in this massive frenzy.

And I started up, just pure intuition. My brother-in-law, Reggie and I, we started up this e-commerce brand called Outlaw Masks. Yes, I get it. Everyone's selling masks at the time.

Where we saw an opportunity in the market was to actually create a really cool brand that people want to represent because we realized no one wanted to wear masks, right? I didn't, I'm sure you guys didn't. No one really wanted to wear them, but we were forced to. We live in Florida.

We don't wear masks. There you go. So, we live we live in the state where masks necessarily weren't enforced, but in a lot of different parts throughout the country, masks were a were a mandate. You had to wear them.

Absolutely. And you know, the reality is that people didn't want to wear them. So we created this really cool brand called Outlaw Masks. We invested a little bit of money, we had the masks made, we launched a website on Shopify all within a 30-day period.

And I often I often have said this before that starting a business is super easy. Like I right now could tell you or any one of your listeners how to start a Shopify print on demand store within two hours and make your first sales today. Like it's really easy to get a website up and going. It's really easy to sell a product and create a business.

Actually growing that business and building a brand is where the work really is done. And when you know a thing or two about marketing, it becomes easier going back to the cheat code analogy. It is a it is a cheat code to know marketing, but you still have to do the work. Yep.

So, we launched this brand Outlaw Mask. First few days that we're in business, we sell masks to a few different friends are seeing our posts on Facebook. Nothing really out of this, you know, out of this world's ordinary. We're about 30 days in and we're really starting to get discouraged because we're seeing like, okay, maybe this is a really bad idea.

People know me as an as an author and speaker and now I look like this complete a-hole that's trying to like monetize and make money off this pandemic. Like, this is not a good look. So, we're about to completely pull the plug on this venture altogether. We go into Walmart one Saturday afternoon and we record a video of us giving a mask to to a Walmart greeter.

And we went in not with the intention of giving a mask to a Walmart greeter. We went in with the intention of creating a viral challenge video for a song that was really popular at the time called WAP. Uh, so it was the WAP challenge. And we posted two videos that evening.

The video of my brother-in-law doing the WAP challenge and then the video of us giving a mask to the frontline worker. We woke up the next morning and both of our phones had just exploded with notifications. Exploded. People buy from people.

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Which was really nice to see. It was really refreshing. Thousands and thousands of dollars of sales. Well, I immediately look at TikTok and the video of the WAP challenge completely flopped.

The video of us giving the masks to the frontline worker had over a million views within 24 hours. Completely free. People commenting, people following us. We gained thousands of followers on TikTok.

So, this goes back to my earlier point, right? You have to AB test. You have to actually do the work to see what works. So we realized 30 days into launching this company, if we do this activity, meaning we post feel good content of us giving masks to frontline workers and we just do this over and over again, that's going to lead to virality on social media.

Because it's feel good content and that feel good content, that virality is going to lead to more people knowing that we exist, which then in turn leads to more sales. So we we ran this play, uh, for about a good six months and made hundreds of thousands of dollars with this business. Well, you know, as great as that as as that era of our life was, that business very quickly came to an end as long as they were once mass mandates were gone, once there were vaccines, it was done. The business was over.

Uh, so going back to your question in terms of pivoting, when you start seeing the writing on the wall, um, you need to pivot fast, right? I pivoted fast as soon as I saw all these speaking engagements at the beginning of 2020 were canceled. As soon as I started losing business, look, immediately my brain went into survival mode around what's next. As soon as we started going from processing over 200 orders a day to 100 to less than 50, we realized, okay, we need to start pivoting once we start getting to the point where there was like 10 sales coming in a day, it was pretty safe to say like, this business is done.

We need to move on to the next. So the next for us was a sneaker store. Uh, we both live outside of Jacksonville in St. Johns County, Florida, which is close to St.

Augustine, highly affluent demographic here. And my business partner and I are fairly young guys, we're, you know, we're both dads. I have a teenage son and that teenage son, uh, gets me into sports cards. And I start collecting sports cards.

We go up to Atlanta for NBA All-Star Weekend at the beginning of 2021 and we go to a sneaker store that has a card shop and we fell in love with that concept of both of those cultures under one roof. So, at this point, we had made a little bit of money with the mass business. Um, you know, we invested it right into creating what became The Hype Section, which is our store that we still have. And again, man, we've been on a pretty good run for for two years.

It helps when you know online marketing and brand building, that becomes the cheat code. But again, I'm in a new role today, working for GetResponse, which is an email marketing platform as their US Brand Evangelist, which again is a testament to pivoting. So, two years into this brick and mortar retail business, business is doing well. But what happens is when you go from working in corporate making high earning income potential to working in e-commerce, especially uh a retail arbitrage in e-commerce, which was the mass business, to then you're working in brick and mortar.

Well, you know, the income ebbs and flows. And I know there's a podcast about, you know, reimagining revenue. So, uh for anyone that, you know, either owns a brick and mortar business, uh you can relate to this, or if you don't, uh let me be the first to tell you that when you have a brick and mortar business, you are the last person to get paid. Right?

In most businesses, you are the absolute last person to get paid. And it's not cheap. You look at our our Instagram, which is @thehypesaction, we have beautiful sneakers in the store, clothes, sports cards. None of that is cheap to put in the store.

Um, the inventory that we sell is essentially marketing collateral because that's what drives people in. So, when you're the last person to get paid and you have to put more money into the business, you have very hard decisions to make. And the hard decision is either I keep paying myself and that draws away from the business, or I go work for someone else, right? I put my business on autopilot.

I have the right people in place. We built the right systems for the business to run itself. Um, I live five minutes away, so if I ever need to hop in, I can hop in there. But the reality is that, you know, a lot of the value that I bring to my own business is is just this.

It's relationship building. It's online marketing. Uh, which doesn't require a physical presence. So, again, man, very good question that I know I've taken a lot of time to answer around pivoting.

But You're the guest. But but that being said, you know, if you in your gut feel like, you know what, maybe this isn't the right time for me to continue to pursue this. Maybe I need to change it up. It's okay.

It's okay to pivot. And throughout my career, I have had to pivot. There's been a lot of ebbs and flows and like, the key is to keep moving forward. Keep the ship sailing forward, keep the ball moving down field.

Whatever analogy you want to use, it's just continuing to progress and move forward. So, I I think you're 100%, excuse me, correct with pivoting. Pivoting, iterating, experimenting, but a lot of specifically in our world and our listeners' world, founders, um, don't do that, are uncomfortable doing that or don't know when to pivot. Carlos, like, you gave a lot of good examples, but like, at a high level, like, when do you pivot?

Like, when is the right time to say, you know what, time to make a shift. Time to try something new. I think a lot of a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs and founders make is they wait too long. They hold on to the dream too long.

And hey, I'm a family man first and first and foremost, right? My wife and my kids come before my business. And, you know, and and this is not disrespect or criticism to anyone out there that might be listening or watching. I see a lot of posts.

I see a lot of posts about, you know, well, my business provides for the family. Hey, at the end of the day, look, businesses come and go, right? Family, family's going to be there with you until the end, right? If a business doesn't work out, who's going to be there?

It's going to be your family. I hope at least, right, that that's the case. You know, in my life. Uh, businesses come and go, relationships come and go, jobs come and go, money comes and goes, right?

It's always it's always ebbing and flowing. But family is one of those things that's extremely important. So, taking care of the needs of your family should come before anything else from my perspective, you know, respectfully. Um, if your business is facing challenges, like again, my partner and I both had to make decisions coming into this year, instead of taking money from the business, let's keep more money in house.

Let's put that money towards buying more inventory, uh, you know, paying employees more, focusing on marketing, focusing on expanding, right? Um, that is when you have to make hard decisions. And part of that decision sometimes involves going out and getting a job somewhere, which there's nothing wrong with that at all. But I think again, a big mistake that people make is they hang on for too long.

Business starts to decline, uh, and and it's already too late for you to make changes. And, you know, the key is to always be innovating, always be adding, you know, revenue streams, uh, you know, we talk about relationships a lot, right? Like if there's something that I could go back and do even differently now, two years into owning a sneaker resale store, it would have probably been in the whole year between the time I signed the lease to actually open, I probably I probably should have gone to four or five sneaker cons. I should have probably gone to more sneaker conventions, right?

Like these are all things in hindsight that I recognize, um, but again, man, going back to your question at the highest level, uh, don't wait until it's too late for you to pivot. Yeah, yeah, totally true. So you've you've managed a bunch of teams. You're now managing employees, that kind of stuff.

How has your leadership evolved over this time? Like from young Carlos trying to like, I don't know, you know, doing speaking engagements at LinkedIn, that kind of stuff until like now, like where's that where's that evolution come from? Um, this is going to sound kind of, um, I I guess self-centered to say, speaking about myself in this context, but I like 40-year-old Carlos a lot more than late 20s, early 30s version of me. I think the reason for that is as I've achieved different uh, successes throughout my career, um, the validation hasn't come from external sources.

The validation has come from within, right? Um, I didn't write a best-selling book for anyone to glorify me as a best-selling author. I did it because I wanted to prove that I could do it to myself. Uh, you know, starting a couple of businesses in the last few years, right?

It wasn't to impress other people. Like at the end of the day, other people have their own lives and to run to to live and businesses to run. But for me, the internal validation that I can confidently look at anyone in the face and say, look, not only am I a marketing guru, but I've actually started businesses and it's not bullshit. Here they are.

Here are the numbers. Like, dude, stuff like that in itself gives me a different level of confidence that when I was younger, I don't want to say I was faking it until I make it because I hate that term fake it till you make it. But I felt that when I was at a younger stage of my career, it was more so about trying to gain other people's acceptance, trying to fit into corporate environments, always trying to get my voice heard, you know, be seen in rooms, the guy that knows it all, and I realized through all that like, first of all, I look like an a-hole. Um, you know, but second, that was a way that I also pushed people away and alienated them and at this stage of my career, like, look, any company that I work for, obviously they know my background, so I don't necessarily need to like beat it over the chest like, hey, I've done all this cool shit.

Uh, but there's that level of respect that exists now that didn't always exist throughout my career. Um, so because that confidence is there, because that level of credibility exists, now it's about working with a team, executing. Everyone's idea is a good idea. It's all about the team.

It's not about me. It's all about the team. And and a lot of it also has to do when you run your own business as well. Like, again, there's this misconception that when you run your own business, it's yours.

Um, yes and no, right? It's still about the team. Like I have a sneaker store that's open right now, five minutes from my house. We've sold, you know, Jordans and Yeezys all day today, but I'm sitting in my house.

That's a byproduct of leadership, entrusting others to get the job done and and and recognizing man, that we're just one team. And when you're a leader, quote unquote, you know, your leadership is really in place to be able to help people break through barriers and obstacles and to help them become better leaders as well. Love that. Yeah, leadership's leadership's a whole one that we could probably go another several hours on.

Um, I I I have one more question before we get into, uh, the rapid fire wrap up here. But when you're building and you've built and scaled, you know, several different things. There's always this like, do we go kind of hard and fast? Do we go slow and steady?

It's kind of scale versus sustainability if you will. How how do you manage the balance, especially across multiple different businesses? I think that's the it's it's the blessing and the curse when you have a business partner, right? So, in the two businesses that I've launched, I've had a business partner, right, which is my my brother-in-law, uh, Reggie.

And he and I, we are very similar but very different. Um, you know, it's almost like polar opposites where he's very much a methodical, uh, kind of like, let me think through this before we execute, whereas I'm I'm let's fire on all all cylinders guy. Like, let's just go. Right?

If something makes sense, we don't need to think about it. Let's just go. Let's just execute. And the balance happens when you have a partner that isn't on your level in terms of wanting to just rapid fire and go.

And you need that in business. Like it drives me insane. It's driven me insane many times, but then I look back and say like, man, I'm glad that I'm glad I I'm glad that you slowed us down. I'm glad that we didn't make that move.

I'm glad I didn't send that text message and I kind of ran it by you to ask you what you thought, right? Like we need that as entrepreneurs because firing on all cylinders just leads to poor decision making. That being said, poor decision making is going to happen at all stages of life and all stages of business. So what you learn from those poor decisions that you make is more important, you know, than the outcome itself.

That's good, that's good. Dale, you you got that, right? So so it sounds like you guys got some you have a great business partner. You got some rapid fire questions for me, so I want you guys to, you know, drop it like it's hot.

All right, let's uh let's let let's rock and roll. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Um, jeez, I'm an early bird now because I work for a Polish-based company. So, I'm up pretty early now and I go to sleep pretty early.

Uh, before that, I was in reverse. Uh, I stay up late, get some work done when everyone in my house is asleep. But honestly, guys, like at my age now, working for a European company, I try to be in bed by like 9:00 or 10 o'clock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

Um, what's the first app you check when you wake up? Oh, damn, man. That's a good one. I would say it is Instagram for no other reason than getting that dopamine rush of like getting a few likes and a few new followers.

That's funny. What um what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Um, I would say, uh, the best the best piece of advice is actually come from my dad, Carlos Gill Senior. So, in my book, The End of Marketing, um, in the acknowledgments, I shared some of the some of the advice that my dad's given to me throughout the years.

One of the ones that has always stood out to me is, um, the worst type of fear is the fear that you anticipate. So, if you go into a situation, whatever it is, a job interview, a a sales meeting, a speaking engagement and you're afraid, then you're going to work yourself up and you're going to let that fear consume you. Uh, if you go into situations confident and fearless, then your confidence is going to carry you in. So, just throughout so many situations in life, I've always had my dad's voice in in the back of my head, just reminding me the worst type of fear is the fear that you anticipate.

There's another there's another piece of advice that he's given me that is a little bit more controversial. And that is outside of your household, you don't discuss money, religion, or politics. And if you go on social media nowadays, like what are people talking about money? all anyone discusses.

We wouldn't discuss anything. You know, and it's it's it's it's it's funny, right? Because we have, you know, podcasts like this, right? Which is about making money, and you've got conferences, and it's about making money, and I get together and have cigar nights with my neighbors and they want to talk politics and they want to talk religion and all these polarizing topics, but my dad is old school.

And what I tell people my dad always meant by telling me that when I was growing up is that not everyone is always going to agree with you. Adam never agrees with me. So, when you start approaching polarizing topics like religion and like politics, according to my dad, you're always going to lose because no you're not always going to have 100% consensus with people agreeing with you. When you talk about money, you're still going to lose because there's always going to be someone in the room that's got more than you or there's going to be someone in the room that if you're flaunting what you have is going to try to take from you.

Yep, 100%. Totally agree. Let's wrap this up. What's your desti- uh, vacation destination, dream vacation destination?

You know, my wife and I for years have wanted to go to Bora Bora and do one of those like overwater bungalows. So, I would say that's more like the dream destination. Uh, I I'm a chill by the pool with a cigar and a mojito in my hand kind of guy. So, I'm okay with going to Dominican Republic or Cancun or the Bahamas any day.

You're good. It's the Cuban. I love it. I love it.

We're we're not chilling by any pool with the weather we're having today, but that's a whole separate conversation. Carlos, man, thanks for joining the show. Where uh where can people find you? For sure.

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and on Twitter at Carlos Gill 83. You can also hit me up on LinkedIn. Thank you, man. Thank you so much for joining.

We appreciate it. Cheers. All right, guys, thank you.