I Built The Largest Private Online Marketing Company In SWFL

"You kill it all the time buddy." That's what a fiend of mine said to me when I told him the local southwest Florida company I was working for was approaching 150,000 online fans. We were on my radio show, Redneck Radio, on 100,000 watt powerhouse KROCK. I had over 15,000 fans for my show.

Imagine a small local business having that many fans on social media. That was more than all the TV stations, newscasters, radio hosts, radio stations, newspapers, and everything else all rolled into one - combined.

When I started working for the place only a couple years before they had 20,000 or so online fans.

By the time I left, 200,000. BAM.

Do you know how many awards I won for growing that network?

How many Cleos or whatever?

Do you know how many times I've been asked to speak at an event based on Marketing in southwest Florida?

Anywhere?

Do you know how many times I've been asked to come speak with college students? High School students?

Do you know how many marketing and PR professionals call me and ask for advice? Ask me to lunch? Ask me to dinner?

None. Not one.

Not one time have I been asked to participate in a local event. Not one time has someone from the agency world here local ever called and said, "will you help us?".

Now why is that?

I'm not an "outsider"?

Sure I don't go to networking events - I rarely if ever know when they are happening.

I don't hang out with the glitterati - but there's really not glitterati to hang out with other than myself.

I've been here in SWFL since 1996/7.

And yet here I am, the one person who's grown more businesses to greater heights, than possibly all of them combined. #7 in the market on radio. 200,000 social marketing fans. Revenues through the roof. Servers breaking down because there is so much internet traffic.

Every business I've worked with explodes (some just implode, depending on who owns the place). No one has done what I've done. And yet, in professional circuits, it's crickets.

Why wouldn't these people be blowing up my phone? Offering speeches and wanting to pay for lunch so that they can pick my brain and find out my keys to success for a client?

There are two reasons, I believe, I've never been called to speak at one of these events:

1. I'm uneducated. I didn't graduate college. I hated it. I didn't go to PR school. I don't have that certificate thing that a lot of other people have. So, I'm not like everyone else. I literally gave myself permission to be the best. To kill it for my client. For those I work for. There was no test for that, so I chose it for myself. That's the first reason.

2. I'm not a member of any professional organization (see #1). I could call 30 industry professionals working in my field and not one would have heard of me. Oh, they might know the clients I've worked for (Redneck Yacht Club, Scarlett's, Rusty's Raw Bar ... might have even heard of some artist from the past when I was writing about them at NashvilleHype!; Lady Antebellum, Rissi Palmer, Hot Chelle Rae, etc etc), but they wouldn't know me.

But maybe there's another reason, beyond the peripheral, that no one ever calls and invites me somewhere or knows who I am and it's this:

I've never really been the guy to go out and blow my own horn (unless you see this as doing that - and it's not). I've just done right by the people I've worked for and built more, and done more, and killed it more, than ...

I'm QUIET. I don't make me the story. I don't get in the way of the client.

I was the face and the voice of my employer I was on TV all the time. On the Radio all the time doing commercials. On stages all the time. But I made sure, every chance I had, to give him - them - the company, the credit. To talk about the business.

The radio show, which was a talk show that lasted an hour, was the only anomaly. It was all about me.

It wouldn't have worked otherwise. Talk shows on radio are very personal in that sense. You can't be a hammer and sell sell sell. You have to be real.

But being real allowed me to talk about the company over and over and over again in a way that kept people tuning in and listening.

Is there a part of me that is jealous that all my 'industry peers' know each other, like each other, talk to each other, and get all the glory and speaking gigs? Sure. I'm human.

But the bottom line is this. I'm happy for the clients I've worked for and the work I've done. I killed it without anyone in our business knowing.

That's OKAY. It's actually good.

Let others get the glory. Let them give the speeches. Get the awards and all that. Write press releases for themselves and get a lot of coverage in the news because they once did that one thing for that other client.

I'm not in competition with them on that level anyhow. I'm in competition with whom ever my client is in competition with.

I'm happy for them! Go for it! Do it ... you got this!

In the meantime, in southwest Florida ...