In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Joey Gilkey, founder of Tribe Prospecting, a done‑for‑you prospecting service for marketing agencies and consultants. Joey opens with a personal story about his brother‑in‑law’s battle with stage‑4 lung cancer, using it to illustrate the importance of valuing relationships and living purposefully. He then explains his business model: prospecting‑as‑a‑service that creates appointments for agencies, emphasizing the need to systematize outreach while remaining personable, using humor and empathy at scale. Joey shares broader business wisdom, stating that expressing empathy drives success in sales, culture, hiring, and life. He advises his younger self to “stop reading, start doing,” urging immediate application of insights from books. On happiness, he differentiates joy from happiness, arguing that true joy comes from being part of something larger than oneself—faith, community, or mission. Joey cites two influential books, The Go‑Giver and The Challenger Sale, highlighting a favorite quote: “Give more value than you receive payment for.” He concludes by directing listeners to his LinkedIn profile and the Tribe Prospecting website.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
¡Hey, ¿qué tal, man? ¿Qué tal, man?
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have Joey Gilkey with us. He's the founder of Tribe Prospecting, which is a done-for-you prospecting business for marketing agencies and consultants. So welcome to the show, Joey.
Hey, Tyler, man, thanks for having me.
Of course, thanks for joining us. And we'll dive in. The first question I have for you, Joey, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Sure. Yeah, man, you know, for me it's gonna appear as a sad story. It's really not. So my wife has a twin brother, his name is Brendan. Now Brendan is 32 years old, super healthy. Last year, almost exactly a year ago, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Metastasized into the brain, 22 tumors all over the body, which obviously that's sad. He's got 4 kids and a wife. I think the most value that I received through walking through that with his family, obviously my wife, we live in the same city, we go to the same church together, and his life is brief, short, and to really value the relationships around you that God's placed around you to not live this life trivially, but instead to really pursue a deep, meaningful life because you don't know how much time you have. So it might be sad, but it's really helped me with perspective on life. It's been kind of a beautiful disaster, if you will, as cliché as that sounds.
No, yeah, man, thank you for sharing that with us. Sure. The next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Sure. So I own 3 different businesses. They all do different things. The first is a real estate investment firm. The next is an ad agency. And then the last is the one you had mentioned in the intro, which is Tribe Prospecting, which is where most of my time is devoted now. I have other people running the other. Businesses. And so what we do is we do a prospecting as a service for agencies. And so our whole goal is how do we create appointments for you so you can be hands-off. And so anyone who's undergoing prospecting, which any business who doesn't have a cash flow issue has a prospecting system. If you do have a cash flow issue, you can usually draw it, you know, you can usually derived that issue from a lack of opportunities, which means a lack of a prospecting process. So I'd say that the most valuable piece of information is to one, systematize and create processes around your prospecting and your outreach. And more than that, what I think is incredibly important is to be a human being in that outreach. I think so often we're so robotic and not very personal in our outreach. Try to be as personable as possible. I know we want to reach people at scale, but I think there are ways by using certain tools to at scale be personable with people. And so I think be a human being, use humor, be personable, and have systems and processes.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Yeah, I think good business comes down to expressing empathy. If you can be empathetic, if you can express care for people and understanding for where they're coming from, understand what makes them tick, what frustrates them, I think that can take you a long way in business, not just for sales but for anything in business, whether it's company culture, Hiring, in life, relationships. I think if you can express empathy, you're going to crush it in business and in life.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
This is because I know who you are and your audience, Tyler Wagner. My 4 words: stop reading, start doing. Now, I'm going to— a caveat to that is I love books to death. I think reading is phenomenal. I think education is phenomenal. What I mean by that is I think so often we read and we don't go do. We don't apply what we read. So often we go to the next book or the next podcast. Instead, we should take the book that we just read and try to find 1 or 2 things that you can apply today. I promise you, if you start applying just 1 principle from every book you read, you're going to be far better off than just moving on to the next book and just acquiring. Knowledge.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Yeah, this is huge. Um, I think the key to happiness— and, and I would almost change that. Happiness to me is a little bit more shallow compared to what I think, you know, I would say the word joy. I think having a deep, uh, joy-filled life, um, is really being a part of something that's bigger than yourself, right? So I think so often we can get so focused on ourselves what's best for us, and we can really lose that, again, empathy. We don't serve other people. We're kind of in it for ourselves. I think the moment that you come outside of yourself and you join something that's bigger than yourself, whether it's— for me, it's my faith, and it's my walk with the Lord and being a part of the Lord's mission, or, you know, if it's your local community or nonprofit, whatever it is, live a life that's that's a part of something bigger than just you, and I promise you're gonna have a joy-filled life.
And what is the best book that you've read, and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Oh man, um, all right, so I have two. So my favorite quote comes from the first one, so I'll save what I learned from that one for that. Um, but the first book is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Um, love that book. Again, I'll get in my quote in the next question, but The other book is The Challenger Sale. That's by, I believe, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. That book has really taught me how to sell, how to be an effective salesperson. The whole premise behind that is how do you take control of the customer conversation? How do you help them see that the way that they're buying currently is incorrect and you need to educate them? That's taken me pretty far in my career.
Yeah. And what is your favorite quote and why?
Yeah, so again, it's from that book, The Go-Giver. And I'm probably butchering the exact quote, but it's, give more value than you receive payment for.
And thank you so much for coming on, man. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?
Yeah, so I'm huge into LinkedIn. I've got a big network on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn, which I believe is linkedin.com. In/joegilkey. If you're an agency, freelancer, consultant, you can find more information at tribeprospecting.com.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate it.
Short talk. Thanks for having me. The podcast you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app completely free from anchor.fm/podcast. That's anchor.fm/podcast.
