Growth marketer CJ Terral shares his four-step formula for work-life balance: find your passion, master it, make it saleable, ensure it creates wins for everyone. He credits his success to connecting deeper through empathy and empowerment, and started young with dog walking and lawn mowing side hustles.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Sure thing. Thanks for having me on, by the way, Pete. Really glad to be here. My name is CJ. I'm I'm a growth marketer, and in a few sentences, I connect makers with markets. So everything from like selling door-to-door to directing digital campaigns over the years, which have driven millions of consumers to view offerings which I've marketed, I channel a range of insights into what I do, funneled into basically my go-to-market technique, cemented in a sequence of frameworks, which I've been working on for many years now, I have brought clarity to startup founders all the way to a few enterprises, driving hundreds of thousands of product sales in over 20 countries online.
CJ, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
Daily growth. Daily growth is really important and I love it. Honestly, a lot of people share this sentiment in my industry, namely because for those who enjoy challenging the status quo, surfacing and basically communicating hidden values about the new offerings which they represent or which they've created, or both, and also enabling people to exhibit their greatest characteristics, it's invigorating. In growth marketing, you were positioned at basically the epicenter of these new ideas, disproving our own ideas through data or science, and also crafting new techniques which have the potential to move your market forward in very progressive ways. What's not to love about that?
Yeah, you're always learning.
Exactly.
That's great. Question number 3: I hear from other business leaders that staying in a good work-life balance for them and their team members is a challenge.
What are your thoughts? Well, it's true for many people, and I've heard that many times. A great mentor of mine once told me that— some very sound advice— He said, first, find your passion. And then second, master it. Third, make it saleable, make it be able to be sold. And fourth, make sure that stage 1 through 3 is a win-win. In other words, find your passion, get great at it, find a market for it, and make it a win-win for everyone involved along the way. To find work-life balance, doing what most excites you can position us to enjoy as many of those moments throughout the day. As for whatever we do. Surrounding ourselves with people who support us and who we genuinely want to support back allows us different areas of our life to really blend more naturally. Of course, having a daily regimen helps to maximize productivity. This means waking up early or going to bed late on a daily basis. I encourage structure to do what you do and when you do it with the people who you can create win-wins with as often as possible.
That's very insightful. Thank you for sharing that. Question number 4: What other successful business leaders like yourself should be on my podcast?
Well, I would say that the types of business leaders to be on the podcast would be those who are entrepreneurs and have worked in the trenches, so to say. Those who've worked on the front lines, whether that means in sales positions, whether it just means starting a new business. Those types of lessons that you really get from engaging with consumers as often as possible, um, really teaches some of the best lessons that I can imagine. Also from my own experiences too. We can be more present day to day, whether startup founders, managers, or thought leaders. Anyone who finds value in every minute of life and wants to share that insight with others through their in-the-trenches type of work, I believe have a win-win in participating. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Totally agree. Totally agree. Question number 5: What insight or advice would you give to other business leaders?
For me, it comes down to 2 words with substance behind them. The 2 words are connecting deeper. What I mean by this is empathy and empowerment are 2 words which have radically helped me in forming lasting connections. With people throughout my career, with friends, and with family. If I can brighten a room by walking into it because people know I am mentally present, number one, and number two, prepared to contribute value to the task at hand, that has grown my credibility and authority faster than most any other approach or technique within my space, because people know that they can count on me, that there's a win-win, which goes back to some of the advice that I mentioned prior. Mastering my craft has also been a byproduct of this by connecting deeper since I intently focus on the skills I want to procure and become better at. Connecting deeper comes with many benefits in life when applied in ways that add value to those besides ourselves.
You know, and what mentioning about being mentally present is so important. It's amazing. What difference that makes to a one-to-one or a one-to-many conversation versus being distracted.
Absolutely. And distractions are all around us too, aren't they? It's, it's amazing how many more we have nowadays. So finding ways to focus intently, connecting deeper, these are great ways to get past those distractions into something that really elevates our lives and others around us. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Question number 6, tell me about your first job.
So my life has kind of been a fusion of hard knocks and academic exploration. My first job, so to say, was more of a side hustle, and that is I went throughout my neighborhood doing tasks from 6 years old until my teenage years, whether that be walking the neighborhood dogs, mowing lawns, taking care of their homes when they're on vacation, and later when providing some rudimentary type of consulting on marketing tasks, because marketing has been a passion of mine for many years. I found ways to generate cash while forming my path into my career, going into college and afterwards.
It's awesome that you were an entrepreneur at 6 years old. I mean, you just, you were born with it.
I really was. I've always enjoyed, I've, I've had a competitive spirit, uh, from very young and it hasn't left me. It's only gotten stronger.. And so being able to sell door-to-door was a great entryway into learning how to do it. Mm-hmm.
I believe it. I believe it. CJ, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
People can find me on my website called CJTerral.com. My first and last name spelled CJT as in Thrive, E-R-R-A-L.com.
Excellent. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
