- When people do a Google search,
they're not doing a search, (upbeat music)
they're looking for a solution to their problem.
And if you want to figure out
what problems people are searching for, do two things.
- It's an inspiration, and in many ways,
obviously because on the business side
you're doing beautiful,
but the way you're acting man is just amazing,
you are so humble in many ways, you know.
(notification sounds)
Where this beautifulness comes from,
where these energies come from?
- Well, I don't know if I'm that humble,
but in general from my parents, you know,
they taught me, when things are going well
there's always other people who have it better than you,
and when things are going very terrible
there's always other people who are struggling
and have it worse than you.
That's helped me stay grounded,
and keep in mind, I didn't grow up,
I'm not saying I have money right now,
but I grow up with very little money.
So, you know, when you live a large portion of your life
not having a ton, you appreciate it,
and you're thankful for the people who help you get there.
And I believe that anyone can be successful,
anyone can do well, it's just a question of,
do they want to put in the time and effort,
and take the time to learn, and keep executing,
and just keep trying and being persistent.
- You were raised in the UK, is that correct?
And then you moved to the US?
- Yeah, born in UK,
and then I grew up mainly in Orange County, California.
- Wonderful.
And then,
obviously a lot of people here are nosy,
but just to remind me,
at 16 you did your first business, which was successful?
- Okay, no, so the first one was a job board,
that one didn't do well, but my second one,
my first real one, whatever you want to end up calling it,
was a ad agency and yeah, that did well.
- And then by 21 you were making $20K a month, correct?
- Something like that, I say, when I was-
- But then you lost it all.
- Yeah, so when I was 16 or 15
I was making around $20,000 a month,
by the time I was 21 I was making...
- Not bad, man, not bad for being a 15-years-old guy
making $10K or $20K a month, huh.
- Yeah, no, this is great,
and then I was making in the millions.
And the point I'm trying to improve is,
not to say I made good money or anything like that,
because as you mentioned,
I lost it all by the time I was 21.
And I learned a very valuable lesson in life.
You know, one, I thought I was on cloud nine,
I was invincible, that wasn't true at all.
But two, I learned a very important in life,
and this is the second thing,
you need to focus on what you're good at,
I started diversifying,
doing too many things I didn't understand,
I didn't have good laser focus,
and that's when I lost all my money, plus more,
and I was at that that time around $1,000,000 in debt.
- How did you get out from it?
$1,000,000 in debt, did you just write off
and say (beep) I'm going somewhere else far away,
or you just, can you come out from-
- No, it was debt, so I had to pay it off,
It doesn't matter what I did next,
I still had to pay it off.
- Wow. So what year did you pay it off, if I can ask?
- Same year, it took one year.
- Okay, not too bad, not too bad.
- So I focused on what I knew,
and by focusing on what I knew I was able to pay it off,
I focused on marketing and my ad agency.
I had that laser focus again,
and that's what changed things.
- Was it, basically, well number one is building your brand,
which you always say is, building the brand
is what making the future is much stronger,
but is it focusing on your own products
that you grow a business,
or giving consultancy for other companies?
What do you think is more important for you
at the moment that helped you, and for you now?
- Doing consulting helped the most,
because I was good at it, or I think I was good at it,
I still think I'm decent at it,
and just providing other companies more traffic and revenue
was creating quick income.
For us it's a problem now,
because finally this is a little tool to find emails,
but also in that moment a lot of companies come to us like,
Gerard, can you do growth agency?
Sure man, many tools like ours has the same problem,
what would you recommend for this companies and people?
- Yeah, so what I would do, if I were you guys,
is I would focus on what you guys are the best at, right?
You guys help with B2B lead generation,
if anyone wants anything else, you would want to partner
with other people who can help them out,
and then that can help you take in extra revenue
without actually doing the work.
So if you partner with people, here's what I mean by that.
For example, my ad agency partners with a few others,
they drive us leads and customers
and we drive them customers,
so they can make more money, and we can make more money,
and it's a win-win for the customer,
because then we specialize in what we're good at,
and let everyone else focus on everything else.
- Oh, that's actually a good idea,
it's like what you do, I guess with Eric,
with Growth Everywhere agencies, and yes,
it's a partnership that you talk about,
some other guys could just do the growth hacking
and then we just do the bring everyone to them.
- Exactly.
- Tell me, audio, how important is the audio,
how important is the YouTube for the future, man?
(notification sounds) Because everyone is focusing
about SEO and content and writing,
tell me, because I think this is coming up big new for that.
- It is very important,
not enough people are focusing on it,
but I agree with you, it's video, audio,
I think it is the future.
- One block for every seven people,
and no one has really think about how do we get voice ready.
How do you get voice ready?
I mean, what's the tools?
Do you have any tools in mind that it's like, okay Gerard,
you really need to use these guys or whatever?
- There is no specific way, other than, think about,
when people do a Google search, they're not doing a search,
they're looking for a solution to their problem,
if you can answer those problems in a sentence or two,
you're more likely to show up for a voice search.
So that's the fundamental thesis.
And if you want to figure out
what problems people are searching for, do two things.
One, go look at your Google search console,
it'll show you where you're getting all the traffic from.
Two, go look at Quora, Quora has a lot of popular questions,
and if you can answer them, you'll get more voice traffic.
- I love Quora, and one of the things is like,
if it's saying Quora, just take it and bring it to LinkedIn,
or bring it to Facebook or wherever.
And I think what you've been doing lately,
which has been amazing, same videos, same background,
three tips, or five tips,
how long does it take you to prepare?
Do you film like five or six in one day, and then you just-
- No, I film 15 in two hours.
- You do 15 of those three-minutes videos in 15...
- Two hours.
- Okay. Do you have the-
- They average four to six minutes,
I'm able to do 15, two hours,
no rehearsing, I just go and I talk.
- Wonderful.
- [Neil] One take.
- Okay, one take.
Okay, I tried to do a few videos one day,
it takes me, man,
how much practice have you been doing?
(notification sounds)
- None.
I'm kind of cheating,
because I've spoke at so many conferences,
I've been doing this for like 17 plus years now,
maybe going on 18,
it's not too hard. right?
- How important is people behind the scenes,
in your case, the filming-
- Very important, without them it wouldn't happen,
Pasquale, my video guy, without him.
But it's the team,
without the team I wouldn't be where I am,
and people forget that.
You know, me Neil, there's nothing magic about me,
what makes my content good, what makes me good, is the team,
I'm nothing without them.
- Oh man, I love what you're saying,
because I am 0.1% of what you're doing,
and the team is just so supportive.
I mean, Gerard helping with this,
Kristen will help me with the, oh man,
for me it's so important.
And sometimes like just, I am like the racing guys,
but they put the wheels, they put the road,
they make sure, everything.
Neil, one, my designer,
it's a little funny thing
we're going to be sending to the office,
or to where hopefully you can have it, okay?
That's a Mona Lisa, especially for you,
with a heart in the hat, from ,
okay, which it's a proper picture, we'll send it to you
as a little gift from Barcelona with love.
- I love it, thank you.
- And being creative,
I remember with one of the podcasts that you did with Eric,
and it's a book talking about giving gifts
to your customers and to your users,
tell me if you have an experience with this,
and if you have any recommendations
for the people who's listening to us.
- Yeah, you know, showing appreciation to your customers
is a great way to help with retention.
And I learned this from Conversion Excel,
it's a company based in the UK,
and when I signed on with a client,
they sent me a gift bag with tea and cookies and everything,
so that way during our kickoff call we could all eat,
and you know, start the kickoff right.