Kyle Gantos: Founder At Meet Your Gig | The Business Blast Podcast #165

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.

¡Hola! ¡Hola!

¡Hola! All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Kyle Gantos with us. He's the founder and CEO of MeetYourGig.com. So welcome to the show, Kyle.

Thank you very much, Tyler. Glad to be here.

Of course, thanks for joining us. We'll dive in. The first question I have for you, Kyle, is what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

About 10 years ago, I launched my first startup, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was a little bit overzealous. In about 6 months, I learned how to lose $50,000. And that was pretty painful. And it took several years of paying off some bank loans. And, you know, on the surface, it was a failure. And that hurt. But I've come to realize that, that that was probably my most valuable education, far more valuable than the near six figures of my graduate degree than any job or certification I've ever had. It taught me that I am capable of doing some pretty incredible things if I just get started. But it also taught me that really failure is something that we're kind of conditioned to think is a bad thing. But failure in this case for me and a lot of the people I look up to is actually where you gain a lot of knowledge. And that's really fueled a lot of my success. So failure is the best education would be the message I got.

And what's your best piece of overall business advice?

Do not operate in a vacuum. I think people, we tend to make assumptions, or maybe even we want to do it our way. That's, you know, I've been guilty of that when I first started off. And one of the things I realized is that your customers are your business. So get out of the building, pick up the phone, don't sell. You hate spam, you hate junk mail, you hate cold calls. So kind of get away from the what's-in-it-for-me approach. Uh, you know, salespeople, every day I get bombarded, and it's those types of transactions that they'll help you get your $30K quota every 3 months. But if you want to be different, if you want to be better, then focus on building relationships. Learn everything you can about your customers, their passion, their values, their motivations, their goals, their challenges, and then figure out which ones you want to solve and go solve them. And If you start to adopt the how can I help you approach, to me, that's how you make $3 million in 3 years instead of $30K every 3 months.

Yes, I love that, man. Um, and if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Do not follow money or measure yourself against others, um, unless you want to become ordinary. Uh, be the author, not the actor. I would tell myself, you can do it, man. Don't wait. Don't be afraid to fail. Get started now. Learn something today. That will ensure your success tomorrow. And don't let your fear hold you back because 90% of those worries are never even going to come true. Just do it, have fun, and enjoy the ride.

And, uh, in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

For me, it's, it's easy. It's, it's follow your passion. Um, become great at what you do because you love it. And it's, it's the knowledge you acquire, the perspective you acquire, the solutions you develop If you love what you do, then you're going to become great at it. And when you become great at something, you become unique, you become rare, valuable. It's hard for people to imitate you. And so if you can create a lot of value, you're going to capture a lot of value. And for me, I've always enjoyed helping others and solving problems. And I think a lot of the times everyone has passion, everyone has some dreams, but if you're not afraid to get started and you don't quit when it gets tough, it's not going to happen overnight. But I just think when you chase money, you give up when it doesn't happen fast. When you love what you do, every day is an opportunity to learn and improve. And if you're thinking long-term, you're going to become something pretty special as opposed to just chasing a dollar today.

And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

I should read more often. I'll be the first to admit that. But one of my favorite books is actually, it's a pretty, it's a short book. It's simple. Is actually at the time I read it was beneficial was after The Failed Startup. So it's a book called The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development. It's by Brant Cooper and Patrick Blazkowicz. And it's all about customer discovery and rapid prototyping. And so kind of one of the main takeaways is, you know, a lot of times going back to not operating in a vacuum, a lot of times we make assumptions. A lot of time, you know, I know a lot of people wanting to start a business, they'll spend months putting together a business plan, they'll go hire lawyers, they'll go hire accountants, they'll go do all these things, but they've never actually gotten their product in front of a customer. And when you can get those mistakes to market, you're going to get feedback from lead users, you're going to get feedback from the people who value what you have to offer, and they're going to help you shape it into something that is valuable and that you've actually validated with the market. So that book, to me, it's short, it's an easy read, it's got some visuals in there, but it's I think sometimes the best lessons are the ones that are simple. For me anyway, it's what happened before and after I read that book that has helped reinforce it. That would be my recommendation.

What is your favorite quote and why?

Where I maybe don't spend as much time reading, I spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos. I have my occasional binge, I should say. I spend a lot of time on my company. I like watching commencement speeches. I like watching different speeches from just whether it be famous people, entrepreneurs, athletes, press conferences. One of my favorite videos to watch, and this is where I got this quote, is Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford. And he's got a line in there that says, your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. And that quote really speaks to me, and hopefully it speaks to everyone.

And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

All right, this is, uh, this is my passion. As I mentioned, is, is I'm, I'm driven to follow my passion. So If you look at recent LinkedIn surveys, 9 out of 10 professionals are— they will acknowledge that they're open to new or better career options. And if you kind of dive a little bit deeper, the primary reasons are most are looking for growth, they're looking for empowerment, they're looking for an opportunity to make a bigger impact and, and to feel rewarded and appreciated, whether that's finding a better cultural fit, finding a better boss, or finding better work-life balance. And So, you know, this is, this is a fact, but unfortunately many people have no idea how to market themselves and nobody on the outside of that building understands what your value proposition is. So it's problematic because over the last decade or so, the workforce has become globalized and you've got online education programs, you've got certifications are now easier to acquire than ever before. So the talent pool has become commoditized. And so experience, education, certifications, they're now more prerequisites than they are differentiators. A graduate degree now makes you, you know, one of 100,000 people a year. So how do people go about advancing their career, finding a better job? They tend to rely on applications, headhunters, introductions. In other words, these things I equate to playing the career lottery. And so when that doesn't work, when you spend 50, 60, 100 hours applying online and not hearing back, you start to go, well, what am I doing wrong? And so you hire a resume writer, and a lot of them mean well, but they tend to sell hope. So things like keywords on your resume, you can trick the applicant tracking system. And so that reinforces your reliance on this this system that, that is really takes control away from you. Um, the other thing we tend to do is we rely on agents or recruiters, and a lot of people don't know this, but recruiters do not work for job seekers. They, they don't share your incentive, they don't share your consequences. And to compound this, you've also got a lot of intermediary talent evaluators who've never worked a day in your shoes. So to make all of this worse, or opportunity, depending on how you look at it. There's an article in Forbes a couple years ago that estimated that by 2020, half of the workforce is going to be freelancers and consultants. And we'll just save the, the artificial intelligence discussion for later. What I'm trying to say is, is right now there's this big shift going on, and you have a choice to either gain a competitive advantage or slowly but surely kind of be blindsided in a few years and maybe even start to become obsolete. And so for those of you who have some passion, who maybe just don't know how to find your target job, or maybe you want to start your own consulting business or, or just have more options on the table to where you have 100% control, there's a different approach. And I think Tyler, your book touches on it when it comes to networking and just the power of relationships. I think a lot of times We're so focused on what's in it for me that we forget to, or we haven't learned how to build relationships and to focus on how you can help other people. So a lot of what I do is to teach people how to differentiate their value proposition and their return on investment. Everything, if you look at Shark Tank, everything is, is how are you going to make my company money, save us money, or save us time? And if you don't know how to translate what you've done in your background into communicating to CEOs and entrepreneurs, um, and communicating how you impact the business, and then if you can't get in front of the actual decision maker, and if you don't know how to discover their challenges and then articulate solutions, then there's a ton of opportunities out there, but you're not going to find it. And so, um, I've helped about 1,000 people do this to date. It really comes down to a lot of what I said, you know, in some of the earlier questions. If you know you're capable of something better, if there's something you want to do, you just don't know how to do it, almost all those challenges can be conquered if you learn how to brand and market yourself. What makes you unique? What's your value proposition? How do you make companies money, save them money, save them time? And then if you can develop a process, and a lot of this can be done online very, very quickly, a few clicks, copies, pastes, LinkedIn, to get in front of a lot of people. But if you can stop selling them stuff, stop asking for them to donate to your career charity, stop blasting your resume out there, and start saying, hey, tell me about your business, where do you want to take it? You can create a lot of opportunities. And that differentiation, that awareness, and presenting solutions to people will create opportunities for you, whether that be consulting gigs, customers, or whether it be career advancement. And, um, you know, for anyone who might want to master those skills or at least get some different perspective, uh, I've got a free training I've put together at our website, meetyourgig.com. It's totally free. It's 2 hours. It's 5 years of knowledge packed into 2 hours. Um, and, uh, hopefully for some of you, it'll give you a new and different way of looking at how you can create opportunities for yourself. So, long-winded answer, Tyler, but, uh, that's what I'm passionate about. And hopefully we can fuel some other people's passion and turn vision into reality.

Yes, man. Dude, no, that was an amazing answer. And so the last question, you know, that I ask is, you know, where's the best place for people to find you online? Is it to go to that free training, or do you have another place that you'd like people to find you at?

Yeah, I think two places: www.meetyourgig.com. You can also go on LinkedIn, and if you'll just search for Kyle Gantos, G-A-N-T-O-S, Um, just look for the founder and CEO at Meet Your Gig. I'm well connected, so just connecting with me, um, might, might help you get some introductions to people that you're looking to connect with. Uh, but if anyone has any questions or just, uh, curious about, uh, you know, getting started, uh, please don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Awesome, man. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Tyler, thank you for what you do. I appreciate your time and, uh, thanks for the opportunity. 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.