Making remote managing work and how to hire the best writers

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Marketing pro Gaetano DiNardi

In episode 10 of the Communicate Influence podcast we talked with Gaetano DiNardi about his fascinating journey as a marketer, from the accidental discovery of the keys SEO, through tough grind of agency work, all the way to Director of Demand Generation with Nextiva, a business VoIP phone system & customer management software company based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Remote working

This time we explore remote working, how Gaetano manages his team and stays on top of issues, and the benefit of remote life when it comes to productivity.

Hiring the best content writers

In the second part of this episode we explore content writing, why writers won’t be displaced by video, and what Gaetano looks for when he hires writers. The thoughts Gaetano shares will help all writers when they apply for a position as a creative or content writer.

Like the show so far? Please let your friends know and add a review to Apple Podcasts! Thank you.

Podcast Transcript

Hi, it’s Sheelagh with the communicate influence podcast. Welcome to episode 11 where I continue the conversation with Gaetano Denardi. It’s Hannah was my guest in episode 10 where he spoke about his marketing career and work. In this episode Gaetano talks about remote working.

He’s director of demand generation with Nextiva and he’s based in Florida. His team is in Phoenix, Arizona at Nextiva’s headquarters. So how exactly does that work next Gaetano explains what he looks for in a writer and how writers can grab his or any hiring managers attention when they’re looking for a new position. Let’s see what Katana has to share.

Alright, what’s up? Everybody? All right, it’s Gaetano Denardi and I run demand generation and next to you and welcome Gaetano. Thanks for doing the intro for the podcast. That was awesome. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks again for having me. It’s always a pleasure to connect and you know talk shop about marketing and and remote life. I think that’s what we’re going to talk about today. You bet.

We’re gonna talk about remote life and I don’t think we mentioned in the last podcast. That you’re based in sunny, Florida. And then after that we’re going to jump into content writing and what you look for what makes a good writer and you know, how compel people can be better writers. Yeah.

So you’re in Florida your team is in Phoenix. I mean that’s a big distance. The u.s. Is a big country.

So, how do you make it work as a remote manager Gaetano?

Yeah. Well, I actually I love remote work. I was first introduced to working remotely about three years ago, and I remember the first week of working from home. I was just like wow.

What a difference and productivity and happiness in just everything like not so a little bit of back, you know back context. I grew up in New York City. I was working in New York City at the time when I first started working remote and I I was living near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx at the time and where I had to travel for work was down on Wall Street So for anybody who’s not familiar with New York City? In the morning Rush on the subway that that commute One Way can be as long as an hour and a half which in many cases it is and when when you think about going home the afternoon Rush it’s no better. So you’re looking at three hours a day of commute time.

Now when you layer in everyone’s angry, it’s packed. It’s freezing outside. No, zero degree temperatures snow storm rain wind, you know the conditions don’t matter. You still got to make it to work on top of everything else you’re dealing with in life that makes for a very very stressful, you know, just day right? Like when you have to just think about all the work you have to do already with three extra hours of this commute right and like there’s often no seats you got Stand for an hour and a half you’re wearing, you know a huge coat and it’s hot in the subway.

So you’re all sweaty. Then you get out in the cold again and your and now the sweat is called. Hey, you know, it’s just problem after you know, so go on from so me. I appreciate remote work so much more than most people because I had to go through hell, you know early in my career.

It’s make it right to grind. So that’s just context so Now let’s talk about what it is today. My team is mostly in Phoenix at the HQ, but I’m remote because before I joined the company I was already in this process of like moving to Florida from New York. So it didn’t really make sense for me to say.

All right. I’m going to cut off everything. I’ve already been doing and just moved it to Phoenix. That was step one.

I think beyond that. I just don’t want to live in Phoenix. To be honest with you. It’s a beautiful place and it’s one of the fastest-growing.

You know economies in the nation, but for me personally, it’s just a little too hot in the summer and the winter is actually quite cold, you know, the desert can drop down to like 40 degrees at night and I much prefer Miami I like, you know, tropical climate and you know, basically my boss was cool. He was like, you know, I you know how to work remote you’ve ran remote teams before I don’t see this being a problem. And in fact, I’m far much more productive working from home than in the office, you know at the Office kind of environment you have people tapping on your shoulder that you know, there’s a lot of noise. There’s people walking back and forth you getting distracted left and right people talking right water-cooler conversations all these things add up.

So when you think about the three hours of commuting then the time you’re actually wasting in the office not doing stuff, you know, you can be looking at four or five hours a day of unproductive time. Now, I add 4-5 hours of productivity back into my day just because I’m working from home. I’m not getting distracted. You know, I’m going fine.

I’m time blocking right I’m going from meeting to call to call to you know, task task task and I’m like super productive. You know, I get done maybe to 3x in a week more than what most people get done that have to you know, go to work and commute and when you consider that I manage nine people now full-time people on top of all the moving projects like that. I’ve got to keep moving, you know, I’ve got a day full of calls usually and then I’ve got to still do email. I’ve still got to go through project.

And I’ve actually still got to work right? So, how do I make time to make all that happen for me being in an office and commuting? I would never be able to be as productive as I am at home. So that’s just kind of my take on remote work. If I ever start a company it will be a remote company and you know, I’m a big proponent of it. So remote all day baby.

That’s fantastic. You you’ve kind of really up to productivity a big issue today is attention. I keep reading about attention everywhere, but you you I’ve got one up on everyone else because it sounds like you’re incredibly focused and you’re paying attention to what you’re doing. You’re not being distracted.

Oh, absolutely. I’m really really good about focusing some of the things I do to maintain my focus. First of all, I don’t have a wife or kids. So, you know that for a lot of people, you know, when they work from home, that’s a huge problem for me.

I just I actually work from home with my younger brother who lives with me and we both work at Nextiva. So It’s actually perfect. We work from home together and just get stuff done, which is great. So I’m not sure where I was going with that.

But basically, you know, I’m just good at eliminating distractions. Like I keep my cell phone away from me. I manage all my calls incoming and outgoing through the Nextiva app on my MacBook. So I actually don’t even need my cell phone around me.

Everyone just call me goes right to the Nextiva app and I manage all that through my through my MacBook and I’m really good about structuring my days. So all that combines with not being tapped on the shoulder. No water cooler discussions. No.

Hey, let’s take a very long lunch. Let’s go get coffee. Like if I want to make a coffee I go right to my stovetop and boom I brewed up in five minutes, you know what I mean? So yeah for me it, you know saving time and productivity is the name of the game and I think I’ve kind of mastered that I mean, it’s such a comprehensive and you know winning argument for working at home, but I’m just kind of like I’ve got two thoughts going through my mind. The first one is obviously Nextiva really wanted you because there are so many companies were if a potential candidate if a candidate says, you know, I really want to be home base.

They they get struck off the list and you know next I’m surprised that companies from the company’s point of view that they don’t do it more often, you know, we make it work because I’m really good with video calls. So like a lot of lot of the stuff that we do like for example once a week the team and I will dive into analytics and we will look at maybe, you know the results for one campaign One landing page test something interesting and I’ll share my screen and I’ll walk through it with everybody and then maybe we’ll pass it over to someone else and they’ll share their screen and they’ll walk through something. So because of Technology were able to make this work, He seamlessly which is fantastic. And you know, I do come into the office probably once a month for about a week just to you know, be with everyone kind of face-to-face and work through some of the more challenging things that I could in theory, you know do through video call, but it’s just easier.

So in some cases to do it together, like one example might be a website redesign. That’s a highly labor-intensive process that you know through video called might be Slower, so it depends on what it is that we’re working on. But you know, the company is very generous about bringing me out when I need to go out there. And you know, we just we just make it work and this particular Arrangement is is awesome.

Because in fact everyone notices it to when I’m in the office less gets done because I’m because I’m in meetings like my email piles up like it’s just slower. You know, I’m talking to people I’m getting distracted like, you know, I’m The long lunches I’m getting face time. So I’m putting in that kind of relationship and Personal Touch to everything. But meanwhile, you know, my backlog is stacked up because I just I’m not at free will to just block out my time the way that I want and just get stuff done.

So it’s the opposite and everyone notices it so that’s that’s kind of kind of validating the argument even further. It’s like wow like when he’s home like he’s able to just get so much more done and just I can manage people more effectively when I’m not it just kind of, you know being pulled in a million different directions. So yeah, we make it work and that’s that’s kind of interesting though because I mean product productivity is so important but the relationship side of things is important to so like would you say that that time in Phoenix is valuable because as you said like you’re building their relationships with your team you seen how they’re working how they’re connecting with each other. Is that still a valuable investment for you? Totally? Yeah.

It’s very Valuable, I don’t describe it the the value of in person. It’s it’s really good. And I think like At first I think it took a while for everyone to kind of warm up to that idea because it was unique like there are a few people working remote but not, you know, not a leader, you know, like II it’s kind of unusual for for the manager to be somewhere else, but the team be at the HQ right like you Usually it might be the opposite. So at first I think it took a while for everyone to warm up to this idea.

But you know, I’ve long kind of earned respect and Trust of the team and I think every visit I make makes things stronger like after work, we’ll go play basketball will go for dinner. So it’s those kinds of things that like just strengthen the bond that you can’t get through video and it’s totally valuable to go there once in awhile and she’ll face and kind of, you know, just hang out because that’s also a part of it too. You know, you gotta you gotta really enjoy who it is you’re working with and after a while people just miss me and I miss them as well. So it’s like damn like, you know, we have fun together and stuff and when we feel it’s right, you know I go out there and we make it happen.

That’s awesome. Now, what about kind of the more challenging stuff of managing every manager knows that the kid be I’m not saying this is the case for you, but every manager has had, you know, someone who might be going through some stuff at home. So they’re distracted at work or there might be two teammates who aren’t getting along as well as they could these things the people skills that you need to resolve these things the HR side of managing. How does that work for you when you’re based in Florida and your team is in Phoenix? Yeah.

Yeah. Um, you know what? It’s not it’s actually not as bad as you might think. I you know, we we don’t Have any of those kinds of problems actually it’s this is a really rare maybe situation, but we don’t have any like interpersonal issues or you know conflicts like we like nobody from my team has ever turned actually and the year and a half that I’ve been in Nextiva. Haven’t lost one person on the team.

In fact, we’ve only grown it and you know, the dynamic has just been really strong and I think I think it’s a testament to like the hiring process like I’m very very very Very selective about like who who comes on board. So I think that plus kind of just like the great company culture. We have we have a really good culture that is kind of the the perfect recipe for having good chemistry having good kind of good energy. I think among the team it’s really collaborative and it’s really positive.

So luckily. We haven’t had any issues where like I have to be there to solve it. Maybe hiring is the main reason why I actually may need to go to Phoenix because we want to add someone to the team and I need to meet them in person. But other than that, we’ve been fortunate to not have any issues and you know, I hope to keep it that way.

That sounds really good. Yeah, I think you’re right. You are fortunate and it obviously is a tribute to you a hiring skill you making sure that you get that mix of fit and scale. Yeah, totally.

I think our CEO to is really great about kind of setting the tone when it comes to this stuff. I like Like that, he there’s certain things that he says that kind of resonates throughout the company and like one thing he always talks about is like there’s no such thing as cool throwing somebody under the bus, you know that whole thing where like if you like the it’s true there really isn’t, you know, if we like let’s say, for example, I say that you know, there was some really bad choices made with a recent ad that we that we launched, you know, maybe it just, you know, the copy wasn’t as strong as it could have been or the creative was. Store or something like that. There’s no hard feelings when it comes to that.

It’s just like alright cool. You know what? Like, what could we do to make it better and let’s just focus on the solution and and that’s kind of what it is. You know, our our CEO drives a lot of that stuff. We’re kind of like one thing we’re kind of known as in the industry is kind of being this Underdog like we’re Scrappy or we’re grittier and and one reason being is because we’re not venture-backed so I don’t know if you know this or not but Nextiva was bootstrapped with the Ders money, you know he invested basically his own money to grow this thing to where it is today.

And where the only one in the industry that is not publicly traded on the stock market and has not taken one dollar of investor money. So because of that were able to kind of operate the way we want craft the kind of culture that we want to craft right? We have no interference from outside forces and we can remain that sort of gritty Scrappy startup mentality, but Within a big company, we’re kind of like a start-up within a big company so that I think that also helps out a lot with the culture and how we run, you know, not just the whole company but marketing as well we have that. So I think it’s great. That’s pretty cool.

So you don’t have to answer to anyone and as you said, you know, if there’s a mistake you kind of say yeah, we made a mistake but you move forward exactly right exactly. Right? No hard feelings. Let’s just move on and get to it now. We touched a little bit on hiring and I really because you know writing is important to me and I started Life as a journalist and I work as a Content writer now, so I’d love to get your thoughts on on writing.

I know that you still right and you hire writers to Let’s kind of look at that a little bit. What do you how do you focus when you write and what do you look for when you hire writers? Yeah. Well, I think there’s a lot of Different types of writing now, I would probably bucket them into a couple of different categories. I think there’s the journalistic style writing the storytelling PR style writing which I think is still massively important its kind of at that brand level where your crafting a Brand Story maybe a brand narrative and it’s there’s a little bit more of a creative element to that side of writing then I would say in the end.

The second kind of bucket of writing there’s like kind of Technical and product style writing which I think is very different than the first type of writing. I just talked about and then I think the third style which is the style that we focus on probably more than anything else is SEO style writing. So that’s landing page copywriting that’s writing Blog blog style content with SEO and 10. That’s SEO meta data writing.

So testing title tags and meta descriptions and H1 tags and all these all these Styles they all have their kind of distinct purposes and we view them differently. So it depends on you know, what type of writing. I’m trying to hire someone for will which will dictate how I how I kind of evaluate them. So the I think that’s End of step one just kind of laying out there the different types of purposes of writing and then and maybe even case studies and customer writing an email marketing and email writing that might be it’s even its own category.

But those are the ways that I kind of break it down and then based on what I’m hiring for will what kind of dictate how I evaluate that that kind of applicant if you want to call it that sure you’ve got some interesting challenges. So I mean a Blog you You know one expects a blog post to be like creative and interesting and yet your company with its with its products. There’s that technical aspect. So do you find candidates with a combination of both or do you have to kind of ease them into the more technical side? How does that work it on? Oh You know, it’s I’m glad you asked that question is probably the hardest thing to balance.

So it’s very very very very rare. Very rare to find somebody who can do both. Usually it’s one of the other and the way that we do it is like we have we have some very good technical writers, but they don’t know how to make it kind of like soft and and adjustable. So if it’s a technical piece will have them take the first stab at it.

Then we’ll have somebody who’s like a very strong kind of Storyteller and an SEO kind of copywriter massage that so they’ll edit it down. They’ll rearrange stuff like they’ll know what needs to come first when he’s to come second one needs to come third how to structure the post right? What should the headlines be? What should the H1 tags be h 2 Etc and on the flip side if we have If we have a creative style writer who’s really good at SEO copywriting more that storytelling style writing. Well, we’ll have to that where there’s technical components will need to pass that off to the technical. So there’s a lot of collaboration happening because we really only have one writer who can do it all and you know, that person’s list of tasks to do is just endless.

So in order to move faster, we have a lot of collaboration happening and in fact the more That happens the better that each side gets at each thing. So they’ll be less reliant on each other in the long run. But you know is essentially what we have is a system of checks and balances that allows us to still, you know, be technically accurate and if a CIO or IT director was to read that they would say, okay. Yeah.

This definitely is accurate. This makes sense. This is you know, factually true, but it’s also not just, you know, a technical manuscript where you know, the average person reading it will fall. Asleep, yeah, it’s got its got I don’t know some kind of aspect of Engagement to it.

There might be some story involve that kind of thing the more creative side of things that draws people in exactly exactly and just simplification of language as well. Like we one thing we really try to do is we run our text through a flesh Kincaid scoring model where Where we try to make sure that our language is not too high grade level. Like I don’t know if you know this but like there was a study that came out on like all the canned all the presidential candidates in the US and then the previous election where like they compared Bernie Sanders language versus Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton versus like some of the other candidates and like Donald Trump had like the easiest to understand language like the lowest grade level, which meant that he Has the most basic style language words with the fewest amount of syllables, right? Like all these sorts of things and we try to we try to model that as well. We try to keep it very low grade level because then we know that anyone can understand it.

We don’t want our language to be to Collegiate right? We want some of these non-technical business owners who read our content to be able to understand it. So we use that as part of our process as well. Yeah and the important thing today I Is the that for the US and Canada will leave in the UK that you know, so many people who are potential customers weren’t weren’t born using English. It’s like English as a second language.

So you need to consider those people as well in your content. Yeah, exactly, right and in fact, you know where we have a lot of customers in fact that growing segment of customers where their their first Asia Spanish, so that’ll tell you right there that you know using sophisticated language is not going to be the best option for them because they may not be able understand everything super clearly and I probably at some point we’ll have to make a decision on how when do we start translating some of this content to Spanish? Like once we have, you know a certain maybe a certain percentage of Spanish speakers in our database or a customer base, you know that will probably Drive the decision but it’s something that will have to think about Future it’s something that I had to do at Pipedrive when I was there. So I know how to do that. It’s not a fun process, but we’ll have to do that.

When when the time comes mmm. That’s another big project and that you’ve got to tackle at some point in the future. Yeah. Yeah and moving on from from writing.

I mean that sounds like that’s the biggest medium that you’re using but what about video or even podcasting? Have you explored those yet? Absolutely, some video is becoming a huge huge huge part of our marketing play. We’re using we’re finding that videos on landing pages do help a lot with conversion and whether it’s explaining how a product works or a testimonial video from a real customer. It’s just it’s just kind of really been a huge huge huge part of our Allergy that’s helping so much. The other part where we’re using video is kind of top funnel advertising.

So I don’t know if you’ve seen these companies like Grammarly and Wicks. We’re just spending crazy mega millions of dollars on video advertising on YouTube every month and they’re doing that to gain mindshare to increase brand Affinity all these sorts of things. We’re kind of trying to follow a similar similar play where we do a lot of video retargeting. So if a visitor comes to our website, they don’t buy anything.

They may be go to YouTube later to search for their favorite, you know top songs that they want to listen to before they walk before they get to watch that music video. They’ll get hit with the next to you, you know 15 second video ad right just to kind of keep them top of mind and it’s becoming a huge part of our strategy and I think in a perfect world, what we would end up doing is having educational video content for all the major keywords and all the There are things that we want to educate the market on and grow the viewership of those videos using YouTube SEO YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world behind Google itself. So, you know YouTube SEO video marketing video advertising video on social like LinkedIn Now video content is arguably the number one way to get a message out there and get engagement and viewership. So I think video is to be really the future for us and you know, we’re not going to slow down anytime soon.

So basically the video for LinkedIn video for YouTube advertising and YouTube SEO. Those are the three areas where we’re going to probably double triple down in the future. Now of course writers often have mixed feelings about that don’t die because they’re sitting there wondering well, you know, what’s going to happen to my copywriting job in in the next couple of years, you know, I see the the advance of Young people using AI to write content and people are preferring video. What’s your take on that? Do you see righteous still with the task to do or will they become obsolete? Yeah.

I think the writers are going anywhere, you know text is still the currency of the web. So even even if like video does, you know come up in the next 10 years and and you know grabs a huge chunk. Of the content that’s being being produced. You’ll still need writers.

They’ll still have to think about engaging titles. They’ll still have to write tags. They’ll still have to write video descriptions. They’ll have to make annotations throughout the video.

They will have to write content that actually goes in the social post like in LinkedIn, for example, you can’t just upload a video and think it’s going to go far and you have to create kind of this this social. Kind of mini story to go along with the video. Like I never just post a video without accompanying text then comments. You’re going to have to you know, respond to all the comments write that requires good writing you have to respond thoughtfully and and and kind of diplomatically not just hey, thanks awesome.

Great, you know you got engaged so I think you know, there’s I don’t think writers are going anywhere still even with blog content video. Joe will become a part of that. You’ll see more videos probably injected into landing pages and blog content, but you still need someone to to to write about the videos and get them get them the exposure that they need and there’s also writing that comes with video production. Someone’s got to write the script as well.

So, you know, it’s good. Yeah, so so righteous can kind of give a little sigh of relief that I’m not going anywhere soon. Yeah. Yeah, the only be more like I think they’ll be a good writer.

Will only become more highly sought after because as the internet gets more and more cluttered you’re going to have to you’re going to need writers who know how to stand out know how to drive engagement and it’s not easy to do. So, I think that you know, the best Riders will only become more valuable as the internet gets more cluttered. Yeah. I know you touched on a really interesting point is probably one of the last questions that I’d like to ask you but you just said good rights.

Has will stand out but for a lot of writers in North America, anyway, they feel frustrated because you know LinkedIn is full of writers their Community might be full of writers, you know, if they want to if someone wants to work at next to you ever they want to grab your attention, you know, they want you to notice their work. What should a right to do here is what would get my attention? First of all, somebody has to send me a really good message. Right? Like let’s say I don’t know them at all. It’s completely cold.

I will judge them probably the hardest on what they’re called email was or what their cold LinkedIn message was like how creative was it? Is it gimmicky or is it is it is it thoughtful did they did they research neck? TV do they know what our style is right? So that’s kind of Step One. How did what was the approach that they took then beyond that, you know, I’m looking for credibility. I’m looking for her where else has this person written, what kind of accolades do they have? Right like for SEO writers? For example, I’d want to know what is the most effective piece of content you have written period for anyone what were the results how much traffic did it get? Get did it drive leads for that company. Did it ranked number one in Google for a specific? Keyword Did It capture that it drive a lot of email addresses into that company’s database.

Like what were some of the results that came with it? If it was a case study what were some of the results that came as a result of that case study, right? Like I want to see some kind of tangible result that has come with any kind of writing project that this candidate has done. And then I want to see finally this is the least important but also I think important is like kind of what are the past clients that you’ve written for saying about you. Do you have any any testimonials on your LinkedIn page any written recommendations about the quality of your work is are you do you have any kind of personal brand, you know that like that’s kind of less important but it still adds I think a little bit to the mix like You a published writer on on say do you have your own column on ink Forbes? Something like that? Where where else in the internet world? Have you written? What have you been recognized for etcetera? So those are those are some of the key things that I would look for aside from finally being relevant have has this person may be written for some of our competitors in the past or very similar adjacent Industries. Do they know the subject matter and then and then of course the quality Leti like I can just kind of assess the quality by looking at examples of their work.

So all those things combined are what I look at. Well that is fantastic advice guidance. So keep a portfolio. As you said make sure your relevant know something about the company do your research and don’t just rush off a cold pitch or a phone call or whatever, you know, really think it through and think about your approach.

And I think the other good thing about your advice as well as that, you know writers can extrapolate from that doesn’t matter what industry you’re in you can follow those guidelines that you’ve laid out and get something from them. So thanks so much for that. Yeah for sure. Like for example, if somebody hasn’t specifically written about voice over IP, but they have may be written about Cloud security.

That’s an adjacent subject. And I think it’s fine as long as the quality is there and all the other things like kind of still apply. So you’re absolutely right Gaetano. We’re getting close to the end.

The time together which has been great and I feel like I’ve learned so much. Thank you for that. But I want to ask you for people who are just starting out in their career. They may feel a little bit overwhelmed because marketing has is changing so much on a week-to-week basis.

What would you say to this person just starting out what that’s a really good one. I would say from my own experience that there is light at the end of the tunnel if you work hard and truly just don’t give up and I know that sounds cliche, but I’ll tell you exactly what I mean. So I think back to my first marketing job at my first my first company that I ever worked at professionally in marketing and it was my first week and my you know, my first deliverable ever was it was Monday my first day and my boss is like, alright, so here’s your first job. By Friday, you have to deliver an entire keyword strategy for our biggest client Major League Baseball and I’m like, oh man, and he’s like oh and by the way, I’m gonna be on the road.

I have to speak at this conference. So you’ll have to work with you know the team here to figure it out, but it’s on you and you have to deliver it by Friday and basically if I didn’t deliver it by Friday, I would be fired. Well, no pressure though, right? No pressure there. So I never On a keyword portfolio before I had never really done like in-depth keyword strategy before like I’ve done it kind of like, you know, right in my own blog and stuff.

Like what keyword do I want to Target? Okay, this seems like the right one go but not like a full keyword. What roadmap for a company like major league baseball that was looking to you know figure out how do we Skyrocket traffic ASAP? So I was feeling so overwhelmed, you know, I was surrounded by people that were way smarter than me. I had just spent all this time in school that you know, they didn’t teach me any of this stuff and I’m really frustrated. You know, I’m I’m totally feeling like I’m out of my element like I’m wondering like what happens if I can’t get it done like will I get fired? Like, you know, what will my future be am I a failure? You know, I had this crazy sense of like imposter syndrome.

Like I wasn’t going to be able to get it done. But really I just put all that negativity aside and I told myself I am going to finish this. I am going to get it done. Somehow some way I’m going to figure this out and I just started like, you know using the resources around me asking my teammates.

Where should I get started? How can I how can I do this kind of see examples of how it’s been done before I was looking at, you know, YouTube tutorials and reading how to guides on like moss and backlinko all these SEO Publications on how to do it. And you know, I got it done within the nick of time. Like I actually had to stay the final night Thursday night. I had I was working on it Non-Stop and like I realized it was like 10 p.m.

And I was still in the office and I was only like seventy percent of the way through and I realized that the only way that I would get it done in time, which was like 10 a.m. Friday morning was to work through the night and I work through the night to get it done people came in on Friday morning. Like why are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Like well, the only way I was gonna get it done and it wasn’t great quality. I’m Gonna lie like like an A+ being the greatest ever deliverable F being like horrible.

I probably delivered like a C+ level deliverable and like my boss reviewed it with like 30 minutes before it was due and like he made a bunch of changes but you know, long story short like I fought through that pain of like not knowing how to do something and truly figuring it out and because like that’s the route I had to take on every marketing deliverable. I ever like learn how to do I I grew so much faster and like, you know here I am today like, you know sharing knowledge of all the stuff that I know and like I still feel like it was just yesterday where I sucked and like I didn’t know if I was going to make it and like I was really just feeling down on myself and frustrated after going through all this school and not learning anything. So my advice to anyone would be, you know, believe in yourself really use the resources that you have on the internet to like go beyond what you Can ask teammates on your manager like take as much initiative as possible to own the end result no matter what and I think you’ll be successful if you have that mentality. That’s that’s really fantastic advice and I have to say a C+ under those circumstances is respectable grade for sure the client that so yeah, and also you don’t have to say it.

Doesn’t it it to me it shows an awful lot about your character because you were Tenacious and determined and so many people would have just quit when they yeah. Yeah. And in fact a lot of people that came in after me that had to do similar stuff ended up quitting. So I was one of the few that made it through well and look, what do you want today? Yeah, so it’s it’s been amazing.

But you know, that’s that’s the beauty of like America, you know, we’re Canada or anywhere that has upward Mobility, you know, you can truly work hard and make something happen for yourself, but you just got to do the work. It’s quite well. It has been so good talking to you. I really appreciate you sharing this time with us, especially on a Sunday evening, and I would love to connect with you in a year to 18 months from now and see where you are on your journey because it has been fascinating and insightful.

Aw. Thanks. Yeah, well, I would love to do it. It’s always always cool.

You know, like I said, just feeling blessed and very fortunate to be able to share what I know. So, thanks again for having me. Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you, and we’ll connect again in the future you take care.

Yeah you as well. Thank you so much. Thank you.

You can find Gaetano on LinkedIn and Twitter.