[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everybody is missing something in life. I felt prisoner to my own success. Change is hard. Change is hard. I get it. Change or die.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm going to change things.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: So what the hell can we change? If we can see things differently, we can have some different results.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Only on now Media Television networks.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Welcome to be the Giraffe. I'm your host, Chris Jarvis. The show where we help you elevate your business and. And your life. If you're ready to reach higher, we're ready to help you. Got a very exciting, very exciting show today. I've got my dear friend Ramon Peralta coming to us from Peralta Design in their Florida offices. And, Ramon, thanks for coming.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Chris. I'm super excited.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So today.
Well, one of the things I like about this show is people want to hear people's stories. They want to hear the stories of vulnerability, the stories of overcoming obstacles. The. They like to hear from people who've been super successful.
What I like is that I get to meet a lot of cool people. But this week, what's really great is that I've known Ramon for. It's going on 40 years, something like that? Yeah, 40 years. So for me, it's gone by in a flash. For him, it probably felt like an eternity. But it's been.
We've known each other a very, very long time.
And for those of you who, you know, you write in and say, I love the giraffe, I love the branding. I love all of this, you know, all of this crazy stuff you have going on. Jarvis.
Ramon was my partner in crime in building out the giraffe brand. So from me to you, brother, thank you.
I appreciate it. And for all of you who see too much giraffe, then you can blame Ramon and you can reach him@peralta design.com Too much giraffe.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: They don't know what's coming. There's even more giraffe coming.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: So, Ramon, you're an excellent branding person, design person.
You've had the chance to work with, of all people, Warren Buffett, a much bigger name than, you know, than I could ever hope to be.
You've had some great success, and I'm sure throughout the episode, we're going to talk a lot about that success.
But it didn't start that way. Like, this is not. You didn't start.
You didn't graduate from an Ivy League school and go work at a Madison Avenue, you know, PR agency and start at the top and fight off all the would be, you know, wannabes trying to take you down. And you had a pretty.
You had a pretty interesting path that I think a lot of folks who are watching this, either they or people they know they're close to, have had a path similar. Would you, would you mind sharing a little bit about that?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Sure, sure. Chris, thank you once again for having me here. And I probably set out to be whatever the opposite is of being an entrepreneur is what I set out to be, you know, And I remember in high school where we met. My dream at the time was to be an artist, to actually be a fine artist. And I remember hiking over to RISD from Classical in an after school program to get my portfolio up. And when I got to the University of Bridgeport, I became a dad. Right.
I became a young father. I'm right now expecting my first grandson in December. So we're very, very excited about that. But that put me on a different path. I went from fine artists to commercial artists. I realized I need to shift gears. I need to get a job.
I have mouths to feed, literally. And so my career path took a more graphic design, commercial art track, and less of a fine art painting. I kind of put that on hold. And I said, you know, I'll paint when I retire and so forth. And at the end of our segment here, I want to, I want to update you on where I am with that because that's very exciting as well.
But that career path took me on the path of advertising, marketing.
I did a lot of direct mail marketing, what we all called junk mail. I used to design those pieces so that they would look like they were from the government so that you didn't throw them away.
And really cut my teeth in that advertising world until many of my colleagues were being drawn over to work with this eccentric millionaire who at the time was this eccentric millionaire named Jay Walker. Not many people knew about him at that time. I'm going back to the mid to late 90s.
And the big idea that he had at the time was, was going to become Priceline, which is still around today, one of the few dot coms that have survived, I think owned by booking.com now.
But when I landed at Priceline, I landed there as, and this is really a funny part of the story, I landed there as a consultant because I had come out of that direct mail kind of corporate ringer. We've all had horror stories of working in corporate.
I have my own, but it's what made me not want to be an employee at that time.
So when I went to Priceline with mouths to feed I took the track of being an independent contractor at the time. It was a dot com.
You know, they had a burn rate to worry about. They had investors.
And I was in the thick of the dot com era or the dot com bubble, where anyone with a dot com was getting investor capital.
When Priceline went public, a lot of people that were employees at the time IPO'd made millions of dollars. I was not one of those. And so I felt in many ways like I had missed an opportunity.
People left the incubator, which was Walker Digital, which was Jay Walker's, kind of.
It literally looked like a spaceship where we worked, it was an amazing, cool place to be. I worked with patent attorneys and my job there was to figure out how to monetize the creative. You know, like create mockups and vaporware of what consumers are going to see. Both to get consumers excited, but investors excited. And that came all crashing down in 2008 because I felt like, well, I missed out on Priceline. I'm going to get on the next bus.
And for 10 years I chased the next big thing, trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice. And in 2008, when the market crashed, the Great Recession happened.
I, along with many of my colleagues, was laid off.
So talk about living beyond my means or expecting a windfall. And then all of a sudden that just the rug gets pulled out from underneath you.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: So you start, you took the job. You took the job, you did anything you could to make money. You were scrapping and scraping, hustling. And then you take the job doing whatever you could do with Priceline. They hit it. So you believe in the person running it because they've already done it once, which, which is reasonable.
And you get involved with Walker Digital. So now you're doing all kinds of projects. You're, you know, you guys are launching businesses every day and you're trying to get inside the investors and the consumer's head. And I think you once told me you were working on. You guys were putting out multiple projects and brands a week.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we. One of the biggest rollouts was with stations casino in Vegas. We, we rolled out a concept called Guaranteed Play Poker where you would, you know, you could package gambling much like you package Disney packages. They were trying to package, you know, a certain amount of slot machine hands with a dinner or a spa or a show to get you to stay in one casino. So a lot of the ideas at Walker after Priceline centered around entertainment, gambling, travel and any. The running joke there was this is it, whatever we were working on at the time, we would say, like, no, this is it. No, this is going to be it. So drinking the Kool Aid every week, you know, putting long hours.
I remember when that happened and I came home and, you know, I didn't have a job.
I remember being called into Jay's office and him just saying, hey, you know, I love you. You've been with me 10 years, but, you know, we just don't have enough to keep you busy. They essentially stopped innovating during that time period, and I led the creative team. So unfortunately, he was generous enough to provide me with six months severance.
I came home with that. But my first instinct, even with that, wasn't to start a business. That had never occurred to me. It was like I always had the side hustle. And I think a lot of people can relate with, like, moonlighting or securing the bag and having a side hustle. And that was my M.O. it was like I would net. And to this day, I don't go out and profess or speak to and say, hey, go quit your job and follow your passion. I don't do that. If you're getting a paycheck somewhere, keep getting it for as long as possible.
But you can at the same time moonlight and build up your brand or build your business slowly. And that's what I was doing. I love the security of benefits and a paycheck every two weeks. But then the excitement of seeking out freelance projects or working on things that I wanted to work on not because I had to work on them, but now I had nothing, came home, and it was very humbling. My wife, the school teacher, became the main breadwinner. I was home with the dog.
And honestly, not having to commute to Stanford, which sometimes was two hours each way, was a welcome relief. And in many ways I felt like, okay, well, then I'm just going to be the guy that comes down, you know, wakes up and comes down in his robe and has his oatmeal and turns on his computer and kind of do the work from home before, you know, pre pandemic.
And I wasn't really thinking long term. I wasn't really thinking big until I had this one client reach out. It was a referral that Jay had sent my way.
Needless to say, every day my wife would come and say, how many jobs did you apply to? And I would say, all of these. And no one was hiring in 2008, but I had this one client from Dallas, a major law firm that needed a rebrand.
And so I took them on and I was billing them because I knew he was like the 11th richest person in Dallas or something like that. I was billing him at an agency rate as a freelancer.
And so doing the work, did a great job. They were happy. Sent him print, sample paper samples, the whole nine. One day he was coming to visit Jay in Stanford and he said, hey, I'm going to be in Stanford.
I'd like to come up and check out your operation.
So I was kind of like, okay, my operation was my French bulldog, you know, farting and snoring and me and my robe in my house. And I wasn't going to meet someone of that caliber at Starbucks or something like that. So I scrambled. And fortunately I had some experience with some pre furnished office space that was nearby where I had. I had pitched on a bigger job with another firm that had office space there. And I went there to get some pre, pre furnished office space. It's almost like a hotel office. You know, you move in, you move out. And I got the smallest package they could offer above the virtual, you know, the virtual address where you just have.
I could use the office five days a month. And that was the package I got.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: And you already knew who was gonna come on day one.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: This was it. I just had one visitor, but I had to sign up for six months.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: And I want to hear what else happens with this. Cause I know that this story is great, but when we come back after the when we come back after the break, Ramon is going to tell us how he went from selling vaporware to living vaporware and then how he turned that vaporware into a career. So stick with us after the break. We will be right back with more from Ram Peralta on Be the Giraffe.
We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Welcome back. We are here with Ramon Peralta of Peralta Design.
He is a branding expert and as you're soon going to find out, or you know from the previous segment, a little bit of a magician. So a little abracadabra took place. He spent years with Jay Walker at Walker Digital.
They were starting brands and working things up for investors and customers all the time, as you called it, vaporware.
And you were hustling and doing anything you could to make things work.
Like a lot of people who are in corporate America working for somebody else.
Situation changes. It's outside your, it's outside your control and you have to figure something out.
And you know, you had this client who was, you know, from a distance. I know my first company, we wrote books for doctors and we sold them to doctors all over the country.
And we would purposely try to do things to make our voices a little scratchier and be a little older because we were in our 20s and in our late 20s we wanted people to think we were in our 40s. And they didn't have any voice modulators or anything back then. So I know the feeling for sure. And then we'd meet people and they're like, where's your dad?
Well, he's not coming. So just so you know, this is all you're going to get. But the, so anyway, so you had the, you had a big client and take us again. They take us from there. So you get a big client from Dallas who wants to see you.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: And where were you? What was going on? What was going through your head?
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it.
So this place that I, that I, that I leased for six months, it's really just meant to move in and move out. But I wanted to give this, this gentleman, this client the impression that this was my, my, my, my agency, you know. And I knew exactly how I was going to walk him through.
I practice his name and my name with the receptionist. You know, I wanted this to be flawless. And I remember I brought in some charge keys, I set up my computer. I had an eye lugger. I don't even know if they sell those anymore, but it was like a rolling luggage that you put your imac in. And I set up my office and waited all day for this gentleman to arrive. And at 5:30pm he called me and he said, hey, I'm still here with Jay in Stanford. I gotta, I gotta fly out of jfk. I'm not gonna make it up, but, you know, maybe next time. And I, I, I never physically met him and I couldn't get out of this contract. I, I won't mention the, the firm, but they're very difficult to get out of contract. So here I was with this six month contract. And what I would do going forward was any, you know, anytime that I had a meeting with a client, I would look on my calendar and pretend like I was full and say, you know, I could meet you Wednesday. And that was the day that I would go into the office. And so it just gave me that feeling of, the feeling of getting dressed, of putting a jacket on of going to this corporate building, of going in the elevator, get it. Making a cappuccino, you know, at the cappuccino machine. All of it, which wasn't really mine, but it gave me the feeling that I could pull this off, that I. That perhaps I could. I could pull off this. This concept of owning my own creative agency. And life has a. Life has a funny way of positioning you for these opportunities. And I'm a man of faith, and I will share that. When I got let go, I remember, you know, one of the things my wife said was like, after all you've done for them, this is. You know, this is what. This is how they treat you. This is how they do you. And I think for a long time, I held onto the idea that my boss was gonna. I was gonna help my boss win big, and then he was gonna sprinkle something on me. And that was the extent of my dream. It wasn't in my own hands, and I don't think it's a coincidence. But a year before I lost my job, I became sober. You know, I used to drink heavily. It was something that was affecting my relationships. And a year before the layoff, I started, you know, attending. Attending meetings, and. And I be. You know, I became sober. My Last drink was November 15, 2007. And so I was prepared in the. In the practice of prayer and meditation so that when I got laid off and I got called into the office to be told that, you know, your services are no longer needed, I was very serene. I remember saying the serenity prayer in my head as I was hearing the news that I was losing my job.
And then as I kept trying to find jobs and wasn't getting them, I remember saying, you know, one of the steps is, like, you have to give up your fear of financial insecurity. And I had to let that go. I said, God, if I'm supposed to sell this house, I'll sell it. If I have to sell my cars, I'll sell them. I'm trusting. And for some of our viewers, it might be trusting the universe, but you basically have to trust this, that you don't know better than the universe does. You know, it was one of those situations where I'm just gonna see how this plays out. I'm gonna do the best I can every day. And it gave me the momentum and the confidence in the faith to say, well, maybe if I look at it as, like, not as a negative, that I can't find a job, but maybe I can't find a job. Because I'm supposed to start a business.
And that gave me kind of the motivation to start hiring, looking for my first employee, get better office space, you know, and grow the business as I have over the last 17 years to, you know, 10 people and 3,000 square feet, two offices. And you've experienced our growth, Chris. You've been a big part of it and a great client for us.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Oh, thanks. And it's been a pleasure to. It's been a pleasure to work with you, and it's been a pleasure to watch. At the same time, I want to. I want to go a little deeper into something.
You remember Owen Samarone, who used to work for me, and you guys worked together on a lot of projects with me, for me, so on and so forth. And I can remember him asking me when he was 25 and I was 50, I can remember Owen asking me, what would you do differently?
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: If you were my. If you could go back to being my age, what would you do differently now? IPad.
I've had personal challenges. I've had business challenges. I've had multiple lawsuits. I've been kicked out of companies I started. I've had.
I've been.
I've sold a company and then had to chase people for years in federal court to try to get my money. I mean, I've had plenty of.
Plenty of challenges. And I guess what was that Mother Teresa saying was, God only gives you the challenges you know, you can handle. And then she said, I wish he didn't have so much faith in me.
But when no one asked me that question of what would you not do? What would you do differently?
And for the people who maybe are sitting on some hard times or things aren't going the way they want, I looked back at all the things that went wrong.
Failed relationships, failed marriage, failed businesses, failed lots of things.
Health challenges, you name it.
I thought about which piece of advice I would give Owen, but because I was far enough beyond all of those things, it wasn't that I forgot the pain, but rather that I already saw how that lesson helped me in the future.
And so, like you getting lost, whether it was with alcohol or losing you, you know, that situation, which nobody would want, that you can't say it's a blessing, but it learned. You know, it brought you into faith, it brought you into serenity, it brought you into meditation, it brought you into taking personal responsibility.
And I think for me, I can already tell the things that cause problems for me at some point, for anybody who's watching, who's in A tough spot.
The lessons you're learning now are the things that are the things that are going to help you in the future. There is a plan, and I know that's the case for me, and now you're sharing that. And I think that's important for people watching who may be questioning why something, whether it's economic, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, whatever it is, these are all things that, you know, we don't know what the plan is for us, and you're never really going to know. It can feel right. But at the end of the day, whatever's making the plan is beyond our understanding. So trusting that there's, there's a lesson to be learned and when you're going through something, just keep going.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think every, every test I've gone through has turned into a testimony. But there, there are lessons that I've learned that helped me get into that next level.
You know, the, the lessons that I've learned in sobriety, for example, have helped me become a better leader.
Less selfish, really question what my motivation is besides, you know, before I make major decisions, more, more empathetic.
You know, it's all of these things that have, have made me a better person.
Translates into, if you can be a better person, you're going to be a better leader. If you, if you're a better leader, you're going to be a better husband, better businessman.
The right people are going to come into your life. You're going to stay away from the wrong type of deals and, and opportunities and, and you'll manifest or attract the better ones. It's all about alignment. And I, and I found that being true to yourself, staying on the, on the right path, following, you know, the journey and trusting that you're on, that you're on the right track, the universe starts opening things, opening doors for you. The right people come in, the right deals come in, and it's, it's just proven to be true. And, and now I'm at a point where I'm paying it forward, continuing to pay it forward and inspiring others.
As you know, you've inspired me to become a speaker, a public speaker. So now I'm not only speaking about launching brands and starting businesses, but also how to build cultures of retention and recruitment. You know, one of the things I hear from the business community is it's hard to find good people and nobody wants to work. And it's like I told them at my last speech at Mohegan Sun, I said, no, young people want to have families and buy Homes and travel and drive nice cars. So they want to work.
They just don't want to work for you.
So it's kind of. It's like all of these things have made me a better person. Right. All the. All the challenges that I've gone through, I made, you know, realizing that, like, okay, what are all these work environments? I mentioned the toxic work environment. Even those environments teach you, like, this is not the type of place I want to create for my employees or my team. Right, Right. So you learn even from the worst bosses, you learn, you know, you learn how not to treat people. How did that make you feel? Do you want other people to feel that way or vice versa? If it made you feel great, what was it about it that made you feel good and encouraged you and motivated you to stay late? Was it always that extra bonus or that extra paycheck, or did you believe there was something greater or some greater mission that you were a part of? And I think as people, we all want to feel like we're part of something greater. We're making a difference, as you put it.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And when we come back, we come back after the break, Ramon's going to talk about this Zen, like, attitude and how he's looked very introspectively or been very introspective and honest with himself to help build a culture that, you know, that it's really attractive for other people to work, and it's great place to be a client, and it's really great stuff. And so our modern day Abraham Lincoln.
I learned something from every man. Sometimes I learn what not to say or how not to act, but at least I learned something.
Come back after the break and you're going to learn something else from our man, Ramon Peralta. We'll see you after the break.
Be bold, be curious, but most importantly, be patient. We'll be right back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Welcome back. We are here with Ramon Peralta. He's already given us his jaywalker and his Abraham Lincoln impressions. And if you missed that, you got to go back and check that out.
Ramon, thank you for being so, you know, so open, honest, vulnerable, talking about the challenges of, you know, the challenges of having business working for somebody else not work out for you. And it's. It's a common thread.
But you did finally go out.
You went on your own. You suffered through some tough stuff. You built some good habits and some Thick skin. And then you decided to do your own thing. There's a lot of people here who are.
A lot of people watching who are either trying to start a side hustle or they want to turn the side hustle into a business, or they're just tired of working for somebody else, or they're one of the millions of people who've involuntarily found themselves with a lot more time off.
Tell me about that journey. Like, what was going on and what did you do when it was time to make this thing happen? I mean, it's going back 17 years, but what did you do? Because I think your story is going to be.
Is going to help some people understand the mindset and some of the actions and let people in on a little bit of that.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the first thing you do is just reach into your network and what relationships do you have that you've maintained over the years that could potentially lead to introductions or referrals or clients? So, I mean, the first thing is just let people know.
First thing I did was let people know, hey, I'm on my own. Here's my portfolio, here's my contact information.
I'm out here. And I would meet with everyone and anyone to the point where in Fairfield county anyway, in Connecticut, you throw a rock, you hit a realtor or a financial advisor, they're everywhere. No offense, Chris, to you, but even if I didn't need to buy a home or I needed another life insurance policy or whatever it might be, I still would go out for coffee with people to just share our LinkedIn connections or share our client list and say, hey, is there anyone on my client list that I could introduce you to? And vice versa. And that became kind of the, the early stages, the foundation of, of networking, of getting out there and introducing my services and my people. And so that's a great way to kind of get started. But I have.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Hold on. But I. But you also.
That didn't come naturally for you, though. Like, you put yourself out there, right? I mean, that was about.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was in a corporate job for most of. Most of my life. So now it's going out there and meeting people, going out and setting up these one on ones in coffee shops and things like that. You definitely. It doesn't come natural, but it's the kind of thing that you feel like you have to do. And if you want to expand your circles, yeah, you have this finite. Finite circle. But then there's like the Venn diagrams, once you start meeting other People, there are people that can be their clients and your clients, people that, you know. That, that warm introduction. I don't, I, I don't believe in the cold call so much as I do in the introduction of somebody. Here's a, here's a dear friend of mine, here's a colleague of mine, here's somebody I want you to meet. And those were the kind of introductions that I was looking for. But what I want to also mention is you have to differentiate yourself, number one. And there are a couple of things I want to talk about, differentiating yourself, which is something you do very well. But also a book that made a profound impact on me was the E. Myth. And that book by Michael Gerber. I highly recommend to any of your viewers that haven't already read it that are thinking about starting something, because I think it's like 99% of small businesses in the US have like one employee. It's, it's like an, it's at an epidemic proportion where everyone is a solopreneur. And I know they're predicting with AI that we're going to see a billion dollar company that has only one employee sometime in the near future through the use of AI. But let's just set AI aside for now and just realize like the, the quote from Michael Gerber that really stood out to me is that if your business does not continue to make money when you go to sleep or when you take a vacation or if you're sick, then you don't have a business, you have a job, you're essentially self employed. And if that's your case, then you're working for a maniac. And I'm paraphrasing Michael Gerber here, and it's because entrepreneurs are always thinking of their business and they never stop thinking about their business. Right? So I needed to scale. In other words, when I'm meeting these people and learning about opportunities, let's say I got an opportunity for a website redesign, which was one of the, one of the earliest opportunities that came across my desk that I didn't have the skill set for, but I still wanted to win the business. And so I realized like, I can design the heck out of a website. I know what it should look like, but I don't code at all. So I need to find somebody that codes and hire that person.
And that, that person ended up being my, my employee number one, who's been with us, you know, 15, 16 years. And you know, you know Jorge very well.
So you start to scale by, by saying, okay, what Are the areas that I'm weak in? What are the skill sets that I need in my business that I don't personally have? Those start to give you clues as to who you should be hiring first, and you have to sell them on a vision. Like literally everyone I've hired has, I think, every single time, probably taken a pay cut to come work for me.
But in doing so, I have to kind of sell them on. What am I trying to build? What potential do they have to be a part of that mission? I have to think bigger. I can't just say, hey, can you come work for me? I'm gonna pay you $20, but I'm gonna charge the client 50. Like that. That's not enough to entice somebody to come be an employee. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about differentiating, which is something like that. I call in my book, like get in line syndrome. Like, in Shelton, Connecticut, where I live, there's a pizza place on every corner. So if you're going to open up a new business and it's a pizza place, there has to be something unique or different about your business. Or it's kind of like get in line, right? And they say if you compete on price, somebody comes to you for price, they're going to leave you for price. So you got to have something else. And so for pd, we had this. You know, I came in with this skill set of this. Of taking ideas and turning them into business rapidly. I think, Chris, you were one of the first ones to kind of really point that out to me and say, like, you've got this team, so you not only launch brands, but you launch them fast. So that was. That was the key differentiator. The other one is your customers will always bring you those clues. When you get a new client and you say, well, if you want to work with me is great, but what happened to the last guy you worked with or the last gal you worked with? They'll tell you they never responded to my phone calls. They missed deadlines.
They. They billed me.
You know, they told me it was going to be one price, and then when I got the bill, it was another.
So you start getting these clues, and I call those the pain points. And then you kind of use those pain points as a hallmarks of what makes your business different. If that's what you're perpetually hearing in your space, then you can say, well, we're transparent and we provide reporting. And, you know, you can come and meet with our team anytime you want. We have some we have a 24 hour call center, whatever it might be.
Some of the first, most important differentiators are actually things that directly address the pain points in your, in your particular industry.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: You know, I like this a lot.
I like a lot of pieces about this. And I think for people doing this, what I heard you say was actually the first thing is you got to put yourself out there. And I remember, I remember when you first started posting on Twitter and on Facebook and on different stuff and you were telling me you got to get on social media.
And I said, nobody gives a shit what I had for breakfast because that's all I thought it was for. Like, I really, you know, I obviously I was, I was. Well, that part I was right about. Nobody does care what I eat. But in general there's a.
Yeah, like that's, you know, that was, you were in that early and putting yourself out there, super important. So you got to put yourself out there.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: You got to put yourself out there. And Chris, you, you reminded me of like what you're talking about here. And all of, all of your viewers have to do this is building your personal brand.
And one of the fastest ways to do that is to position yourself as a subject matter expert. And, and how can you do that? It's with content marketing. And that's what, that's what you're talking about. Chris, in that span of time, like really during COVID I know Covet hurt a lot of businesses, but it also propelled a lot of businesses. It was like a catalyst for a lot of businesses. And for us, we, we stayed open. We, we were an essential, you know, business because we were, we were supporting companies that were selling like the clear face shields and things like that. But more importantly, I put out over 150 videos during that time period. Every Friday I would put out a two minute video and put that video on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram. And that's what I was telling you back in the day, that you got to do more of it because it just puts yourself out there as a subject matter expert.
And really quickly, I'll tell you, the impact that that had on me and my personal brand is, is that I got invited to be on a webinar with a local chamber about reopening safely. This is back when people were putting plexiglass in between each other's desks and things of that nature. And I got invited onto this panel and I did my piece. I talked and talked about what we were doing at PD to stay open. And next thing you know, I got a call from npr, NPR Marketplace, and they said, would you mind doing an interview about reopening safely? And I said, of course. So I did the interview.
Next thing you know, it airs and I get all these, all these people calling me, hey, I just heard you on NPR Marketplace.
Next thing you know, I got a call from and I asked npr, I said, how did you find out about me? And they said, well, we were looking on Twitter and we were looking for webinars, and we found one and we signed up and you. And we saw you on it.
Now I'm on npr. And then I get a call from the Today Show. And the Today show wanted me to do a segment on reopening safely. And I asked them the same thing, and they heard me on npr. And all of this stemmed from these little, you know, zoom recordings that I edited and put captions on. And by the way, 80% of videos are watched without any sound. So you have to have captions on your content when you're putting it out there.
I will, I will add this little nugget, which is like a teaching moment, which is what I call the golden content ratio.
And I recommend everyone out there that's building a personal brand or wondering what to post that you follow it. And essentially, I'm gonna have you hold.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: On because I want to have an excellent hook for after the, for after the break. So we're gonna. So, so you talked about diversification, about differentiation, talking about putting yourself out there, and you've got your golden nugget. The golden nugget of this is going to come back after the break. So if you want the golden nugget, the gold, the golden ticket, you don't need to get into bed with two sets of grandparents. You can just come back after the break and we're going to. Don't get a lot of Willy Wonka references, but we'll get one.
Come back after the break. Ramon Peralta is going to tell you about the golden nugget, the thing that will help you stand out. He went from not having an, not having an office to doing projects for Warren Buffett, being on NPR and being on the Today show, if that sounds good to you and you're ready to reach higher. Come back after the break.
We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more BE the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Welcome back. Segment four, the first Three have been absolute fire. I am with Ramon Peralta, the author of Launch youh Brand.
I know everybody's coming back for the golden nugget you have that you teased everybody with at the end of the last segment. You're the one who should have the TV show.
But I want to just. I want to quickly go over some of the things that you talked about. Really important for people starting a business.
Putting yourself out there is so important.
Really, really important to put yourself out there. And I know for me, I call it going live versus sitting in the lab. In the lab is when I'm in my house and I'm surrounded by whiteboards and I'm trying to sketch out the perfect plan. But I learned that going live, actually talking to somebody, trying to sell the idea, getting real feedback with live ammunition is invaluable. And so by putting yourself out there when it's not perfect, you talked about going out there, talking to people, taking meetings, asking questions, and listening to the answers. You found opportunities and you found a gig that, like, I'm going to solve a problem for somebody. And then you went out and found the people you needed to help you solve the problem. When you hired Jorge and you expanded your company's offerings, because that's what it was. And that was, you know, my whole career has been pivot, pivot, pivot based on, what does the market need?
So, and then once you figure out what you do, how do you differentiate from other people?
All that was great. So people, get yourself out there, talk to people, ask questions. Most importantly, listen to the answers so you can figure out what people really want. You gave a great comment about asking people what worked and what didn't work with the last person so important, because people will tell you, God, I hated this. Well, then, you know, we're not going to do that.
My dad was a salesman. I was like, how are you so good? He said, I asked people what was most important.
He's like, there's three things. There's price, there's speed, and there's quality. You can have two of them. And I'd ask him which ones you want, and then I'd focus on those two, because that was, you can't ask them what they want. And he's like, how hard is it? You ask them what they want, and then you tell them what they want to hear, and then you have a deal. So, anyway, so with all of that great advice, if you didn't hear it, please go back and watch segment three. It was fantastic.
But you said you have some gold. So now we'll get into the solid gold.
I'll shut up because people like, please, we want more Ramon. So Ramon, tell us your golden nuggets, please.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Yes. And listen, all of this kind of segues right into the next piece because what you just shared about putting yourself out there, not just becoming a subject matter expert, but meeting with folks and exchanging your client list.
Do it in the spirit of helping others. Don't go and see like what you can get out of it because that energy is.
People won't continue to have sit downs with you. But if you get known as a connector or somebody that introduces other people or brings opportunities to others, then that is a great brand reputation for you. You're a connector.
Expand your network, people will, you'll basically create an army of ambassador of brand ambassadors. There are going to be people out there talking about you and that's going to multiply the opportunities that come your way. So think of it in that way. Think of it abundantly. Think about it in helping others others and paying it forward. So we talked about being that subject matter expert. I want to talk about the gold. I call it the golden content ratio. So if you think of this as a pie chart, you have this circle, half of that circle. 50% of what you're posting should be educational. And what I mean by posting is LinkedIn, social media, whatever your platform of choice. And that, that's a whole nother conversation. But you really have to think of who your target audience is and where are they. If you're selling to folks under 25, then you need to be on TikTok, right? If you're selling to other businesses, then you need to have a strong presence on LinkedIn, right? If you're selling to people over 50, Facebook's your marketplace, right? So think about where your customers are and post there. So 50% of your content should be educational. People go online primarily for two reasons, to learn or to laugh. They don't go there to be sold to. Even though it's chock full of advertisements, people turn them off, they ignore them, they scroll by and your whole goal is how do you stop the scroll? How do you get people to say, hey, this guy always says something or this gal always says something important. I always learn something. I always get inspired by this person's content.
The ultimate compliment is when somebody shares your content.
If you put out something that's so educational, people will share it and then it has that opportunity to go viral. So video is still the best medium, but you can Also put graphic quotes, photos.
Some people like to write mini blogs. Whatever your method is, just put content out there. But 50% of it should be educational. And you'd be surprised. The information that you take for granted that could be valuable to somebody else, even if you're a handyman. Here are the top five ways to winterize your home. That's a great piece of content that could also become a lead magnet for you. Somebody wants to download that white paper on how to plan for your, you know, a living trust or something like that, they're going to give you their contact info in exchange, right? So lead magnets, education. 50% of your content.
The other 30% of that content, right, should be entertainment. This is where you might show the culture at your office. Maybe you're. Maybe you have a dog that comes in every day and you record, record the, you know, from the dog's perspective, what your office looks like or your team, your team out for some sort of team bonding activity or maybe some community service project that your company is, is active in or some social cause that's important to your company. All those things fall under the, the entertainment aspect. Before and afters. Also, if you're a home remodeler, if you're a plastic surgeon, right, before and afters are great content. That falls under Entertainment. Now, that's 80% of my content. And I haven't sold anything yet, right? 80%, the last 20. That's when you can say, hey, I'm offering a free course or hey, I'm going to be speaking at this event and here you can buy tickets here, or hey, we're offering a website revamp package or a, I don't know, we're going to provide a free audit of your, of your, I don't know, your retirement plan. Whatever your pitch might be, it's okay to share it on social, but do it after you've built a following.
Only 20%. The. The biggest mistake I see, Chris, out there is entrepreneurs, especially those that are really aggressive, is that they have that ratio upside down. They're selling 80% of the time. And then they might post a joke or they might sit. They might show a vacation photo or a sandwich like you do.
But 80% is selling. And if you're selling 80% of the time, you're losing followers. You're People get.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: Yeah, people are buying none percent of the time.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Exactly. So follow that golden content ratio and I think you'll see some success in your, in your followership and in the sharing and in your personal brand. Positioning yourself as a subject matter expert.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: I think that's great. We've got, we've got another four, five minutes left. I want to make sure everybody knows that your book launched launch your brand. Other than having, other than having some hack write the forward you get. You know, this is a heck of a book.
Where can people get that?
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Yes. So launch your brand. Book.com is where you can find it. You can buy autographed copies there. It's also available on Amazon.
There's also an ebook version that you can get on the website as well. Again, that's launch Your brand book book.com is based off of seminars that I do with many incubators and, and business accelerators around the country. I'm also a long time volunteer for score.
So it's a great kind of step by step approach to launching your brand. From establishing the look and feel, your messaging to your digital footprint to driving traffic and brand awareness. So kind of covers those three gamuts and is chock full of examples in there. And also some of my story is in there that we've shared here. And again Chris, thank you for writing the forward which kind of. We managed to get some giraffe in.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: Here so never too much giraffe or cowbell. And we've got. So you mentioned score, the service corps of retired executives. That's another great nugget people. If you want to find someone in it. People who are seasoned professionals in an industry that don't cost anything, they're happy to check you out. I'm happy to help you out. Check them
[email protected] we've got and people can find you@peralta design.com.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Right. Any other handles you want to share, Ramon?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Peralta.com will take you right to my speaker page and you'll see some of my artwork there.
I don't know if this is the right time, but I. Yeah, go for it.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: You mentioned it in the beginning that you were excited and listen, the reason, the reason why we do things as entrepreneurs is so we can live a life of we do it for the freedom and then we end up having no freedom. But you said in the beginning art was something you started with and now you've come full circle. You know, 50 years later you've got. So tell us, tell us what you have going on in the art.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. I, I mean people say I left the 9 to 5 to work 5 to 9. But I love, even though my calendar is completely chock full, I love the freedom that it brings it's full because I want it to be. And it's full of a lot of the different things that I love doing, whether it's exercising or golf or now painting. And I kept waiting and waiting. Like when I retire, I'm going to paint. When I sell the business, I'm going to paint, I'm going to do this. And the reality is, Kris, we're in our 50s now and a lot of our colleagues are just no longer with us. And I said to myself, you know, what am I waiting for if I have the freedom now? I built this business, they don't need me. I actually think I close more deals when I'm not in the office.
So if they're fine without me, what am I going to do with this free time besides try to pay it forward and help others and do all these, all the speaking. I wanted to kind of reconnect with what my original passion was and I was inspired to paint. And so I'm very excited to announce that this fall I'll be having my first installation at a community college, CT State Community College in Bridgeport.
It's going to be up there all semester. I'm dropping paintings off next week. Actually, I've done about a dozen paintings. I work in acrylic.
And there's, there's. It's really hard to explain what it feels like to actually use your talents and gifts, your God given talents and gifts. And you know, it's something that I, I just said, you know, I'm doing it now and, and it's. Part of it is, is my immortality, part of it is my legacy. I envision, like I mentioned, I'm having a grandson. I maybe, you know, long after I'm gone, my paintings are hanging in my great grandson's home right somewhere down the line. And so I'm doing this whole series on ancestry. And it's also a give back for me because when you're from the Caribbean you realize and you do your ancestry, you, you're everything I've got Spanish, Portuguese, African, indigenous, you know, all kind of ancestry is mixed in when you're from the Caribbean. And so my paintings are kind of, I call them Conversations with the Ancestors. And I'm doing a series of self portraits, musical instruments, food that come from all these different cultures and countries as a way, I think to bring us closer together.
The message, the central message is where a human race, we're way more alike than we are different. And so it's my motivation to continue painting. I'm very excited and I just want to say for those entrepreneurs and hustlers out there is that a dream deferred is not a dream denied. Use your gifts. None of us want to get to the pearly gates and then, you know, shrug our shoulders when God asks us. So did you use the gifts I gave you?
Did you share them with the world? And you're like, nah, I didn't have much time for that. So I don't want to be that guy. I want to make sure I'm using all my gifts and that I'm also sharing them with others.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: Well, thank you very much for sharing them today. I want to let you get out to do some more painting, everybody. Ramon Peralta. Ramon Peralta.com, peralta Design, the author of Launch youh Brand. If you're ready. I cannot thank you enough for jumping on. I know you're actually heading out of town and traveling, and you made time for this for the audience and for me. So, brother, thank you so much.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you. I'm off to Scotland. I'm going to go play St. Andrews.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: Good for you. Perfect. I love it. So four, we're on our way. So everybody, thank you. Thank you for being here for this episode of Be the Giraffe with Ramon Peralta. Don't forget that you have to elevate your perspective and see a better path when you want to be a giraffe. We'll see you next time.
