Roger Lopez, a digital marketing leader for over 20 years, founded his first agency at 20 after an employee challenged him to learn hands-on skills like video editing and design. He treats digital marketing like medicine: constant weekly learning because tools become obsolete fast. His core advice: stay humble, ask for help regardless of rank, and love what you do rather than chase money.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Our guest today is based in Atlanta, Georgia. His name is Roger Lopez and he's been leading marketing and digital product teams for more than 20 years. Starting the first digital agency in the desert Southwest at the tender age of 20. He is frequently called upon to be a keynote speaker at marketing events and conferences, presenting on new marketing initiatives like mobile innovation, digital measurement, and growth hacking. So welcome to the show, man.
Oh, awesome to have you being a part of your show.
Awesome, brother. Yeah, I'm pumped to have you here. A lot of experience, so I'm sure we'll learn a lot. Um, so the first one we ask on this show, uh, Roger, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Uh, probably, you know, the best story of my life happened when I started my agency. Is I was 20, 20 years old. I had employees that were sometimes 10, 15 years older than me. And, you know, I always knew what I was doing and loved what I was doing. But one thing that I learned back in the day I came in to present my employees what the plan was for a new customer, and I realized that one of them kind of rolled their eyes on the side. And so I dug a little bit, found, and took one of my employees to find out what was wrong. And one of the things he told me back in the day, he said, you know what, you're a visionary, you love what you're doing, but sometimes you don't know what it takes to build it. Because you don't have either hands-on technical knowledge, the creative knowledge, you know, you know, and, you know, we know we love you, we, you know, you've been leading this company from scratch, but, you know, sometimes you don't know what it takes. And so, so, you know, I went back, you know, you know, went back, back home, and I kind of thought about it, you know, what I would do. And, and, you know, I could have done two things: gone back the next day and said, I'm the boss, do what I say, I'm paying the bills. Or I could do what I ended up doing. I just went back and told my employees, hey, I'm, you know what, starting tomorrow, you know, I'm not going to go to the sales calls, so send my team over. And I told them, you know, every day of the week, you know, one week at a time, I'm going to go out in the field with you guys, you know, teach me how to do video editing, teach me how to do graphic design, teach me how to do, you know, I want to, you know, if it means just holding up a light, that's what I'm going to do. And that pretty much just changed the way I became a leader, you know, 20 years later, is always be hands-on no matter how high a level and, and, you know, removed I would be at C-level, VP-level. I always kept in touch with, you know, hands-on with any of the technology or initiatives that, you know, that, that marketing was doing. And it kind of helped out because as this whole entire digital kind of evolved, It allowed me to see the shift as it was happening, and most marketers my age, uh, by time, you know, that were around my, you know, around my, you know, my time frame, uh, by time the digital started popping out 10 years later, they were already far removed. They were more of a manager-director level, and, and that shift happened underneath them, and they didn't realize what happened. And those are the executives right now that they're afraid of, of some of the data stuff and the stuff. They're not so native and they're trying to, you know, learn about it and everything. And for me, it was all, you know, since I was always hands-on, I was able to, you know, pick it up as it was evolving and it kind of gave me a head up, you know, on the digital side above everybody else in, in my, in my age range and everything.
So, absolutely, dude. Yeah, and you gotta lead by example, right? And I think the culture of your company is so important. So, I think you made the right decision, you know, by going back and, uh, and saying like, okay, actually I do want to know what it takes.
Yeah, yeah, it costs a little sleep.
See, I want to be involved in it.
Yeah.
Um, so I think, yeah, yeah, a little sleep.
Yeah, it, it, it's still got to do your job, you know, that you're having to do as an executive and, and And you got to find extra time to be able to do it. And that's the thing I tell people is, you know, it's just going to cost you extra time and you just got to be willing to do it.
Absolutely. So my next one for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
The biggest thing, you know, you know, if you're in my, you know, you know, age range as far as if you're on the executive level, is never start learning. Or if you're trying to get into your career, don't think that this is the old school career where, you know, you got your MBA, you got your, you know, you know, your degree, and now it's about doing it, and you forget, you know, what you forget about learning. Digital— the digital world is more like medicine now, that it's evolving on a daily basis. And you don't see doctors saying, I already learned everything I need to learn, um, you know.
Yep.
Get it done, you know. So you, you— now our field is a point that you're going to have to constantly be learning on a weekly basis because it's evolving. And stuff that you learned 10 years ago or even 3 years ago, uh, is no longer relevant. And you have to come with that understanding that this is how it's going to be forever now.
Yep, dude, I love it. That is a great comparison right there, like medicine. I like that. Next one is, what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Um, probably, you know, the best business advice is, is, um, be humble. In essence, being humble is that you don't know everything. Don't be afraid to ask. There's always someone who's done it better, you know, and don't be afraid to ask no matter how high that person is. You know, how unreachable. A lot of times is people think that, oh, I can never ask the, you know, the CEO of this type of company. You know, if you honestly reach out to those people and give them an honest, you know, question, you know, and be humble about it, you'd be surprised how many times they'll reply and they'll say, oh, you know what, you're the first person who's not asking for a job and truly asking for advice. Yeah, like that. So you definitely always be humble and with the mentality that you want to learn, and, and then you can actually get incredible advice.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Probably, uh, you're not crazy. Yeah, you know, at times, at times you doubt yourself, you know, when you would do things and, you know, And, and, you know, you're thinking you're kind of, you know, you just wasted your time and it would have saved me a lot of, you know, you know, worries that it wasn't going to, you know, maybe I was doing too much. It just kind of more of a reassurance. It probably would have allowed me to have a little more fun than being this paranoid, you know, uh, you know, I'm Hispanic, you know, being Hispanic in the Silicon Valley, the dot-com boom, I was 0.00005%. So you have that paranoia that, that you have to work 10 times as much, you know. So, so I definitely would have told myself, relax, follow, have a little fun.
Absolutely. And then, so that perfectly leads into the next one. So kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Love what you do, you know, whatever job, whatever career is It has to be something that you love. Um, there's too many people who have chosen their careers because, you know, it was what made the most money or what they were told. Is love what you do and that's it, you know, and I'll carry it to your family. It'll carry to everything if, you know, if you're doing something that you're passionate about and you would do it for free.
Absolutely. I agree. Um, and then what is the best book that you've read and what's the number one thing you learned from that?
You know, back to my answer regarding, you know, how things change so fast. So business and in my field, I do not read one ounce of books because by the time it's published, it's too late. So the last book I actually said it was worthwhile, it happens to be funny that it's probably one of the most relevant books for people in its thousands of years, Art of War. Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't read any books in my industry because like I said, if it's been published, it's already outdated.
And then what is your favorite quote and why?
Uh, probably has to be— could be from The Art of War, you know, like that. The number one quote is, uh, one of the quotes is paraphrased because everything's paraphrased because it was originally Chinese, is, you know, The supreme art of war is winning a battle without ever fighting. So it's really, if you can actually use strategy, you won't have to fight. And that's the supreme thing that you can do, is be able to, you know, win it without actually having to fight.
Yep, I love that, dude. Um, well, thanks for coming on. The last one I got for you: where can our listeners best find you online?
Yep, just, uh, you know, you can Google me. I'm usually in the top 5, you know, Google person. So just my Google Roger Lopez and, or even on LinkedIn, you know, I'm, I'm probably one of the most connected marketers, top 1% connected marketers now on LinkedIn. So just, uh, uh, go to LinkedIn and send me a LinkedIn request. Google, you know, look for me under Roger Lopez.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for coming on.
No problem. Have a good day.
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