Hot Takes Discussion
Daniella (D): Okay. Cute. So to get the ball rolling on this podcast, I’m going to read you some hot takes and I want you to tell me if you agree with them or not. Okay. Okay. First take flip phones are better than smartphones. You’re talking about the age, the old ones. Yeah. Agree or disagree?
Q (Q): I disagree. I disagree, yeah.
D: Yeah, I prefer smartphones too. I don’t have to explain right in there. It’s just agreeance or not.
Q: No, I get that.
D: Next one. Concerts are overrated. Always better to listen to music at home.
Q: Oh, that’s a trick question. I don’t agree.
D: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don’t want to get canceled for that one either. I don’t agree there. The vibe is there.
D: Next question. Next take. Aliens definitely exist.
Q: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
D: Yeah, I totally agree with that one too. And next hot take. Who wouldn’t agree with that? People who don’t believe in aliens, I guess. Pineapple does belong on pizza.
Q: Yes. Anything you want. Chocolate, whatever you want to put in pizza. It’s your pizza, right? What people are always like judging other people’s pizzas. Like pineapples, like it’s not, you don’t eat it. You know, if I want to put, I don’t know, baby food. It’s my pizza.
D: That’s true. Exactly. So the pineapple pizza is not bad. It’s not bad. And I like anchovies and all of that. I mean, if I’m paying for it, I think I should put whatever I want. And then the fact that people made this an issue for years of the pineapple stuff, there’s other ingredients that don’t belong there, in my opinion. But you can’t judge people based on their pizza choices. You can’t.
Q: No, I get that. I totally agree. Justice for pineapple pizza.
D: Um, and guys, you heard it that was curious doing our game of hot takes. Did I win or what happened?
Q: There was no winning or losing it was more just like having fun but I want to win.
D: I would say you won. You didn’t have any bad answers. So a little competitive.
Q: Yes. No, I get that. That’s cool. And welcome Q to the Fully Managed Podcast. Welcome everybody watching and listening. This is where we talk about marketing, we talk about business, and we assist all of you with your business journeys and you know me Daniella I’m the host and today our guest is Curys from Spread Agency I think I already said that welcome Q how are you doing?
Q: I’m so excited to have you today. I am doing a man yeah out here because I was trying to get to my office and somehow it takes me like three hours every time, just phone calls and things like this. So that’s, but I love it. I love what I do. So it’s like every day is like an adventure. I’d rather do this than, I don’t know, I could be roofing out there, you know, and putting roofs at ninety degree weather, which is a hard job. So I’m lucky. I’m very blessed. I’m so happy. I’m so excited to have you.
D: And I am actually really interested in what you guys do at Spread. So to get the ball rolling, get us started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what it is, what you guys are all about, everything that we got to know.
Q: Wow. Well, I couldn’t tell you everything, but I can tell you a lot. Well, and the reason is because we do, basically, Spread is an agency I’m going to put this in a way that’s easy. It’s an agency that has groups of agencies. It’s like a conglomerate, right? So we have a section, for example, or a group that’s called Spreading Love that’s part of Spread. But it’s its own company. And what we do is we help nonprofits raise funds. So that’s all that group does. We have another group that is Spread Dental. And all we do is we deal in the dental industry marketing from everything you can think of in the dental industry. Then we have a niche under that that is pediatric dental marketing, which is where we go even deeper into dental marketing and doing marketing for just pediatric dentists. Because I believe that that’s where the key is in being really successful. specialists on what you do. Don’t be a doctor that takes care of all the ailments. Be that brain surgeon. That’s what we try to do. We have, for example, Sprint Politics that we help political campaigns and we help political people that are in politics. And we have a lot of good traction there. And a lot of those I can’t really talk about because we do a lot of also covert kind of stuff. We create content that sort of influences a lot of things in government and politics. And those are very, very sensitive because it’s hard to explain, but it’s just things that we do that can sway people’s opinion. And you know what? It’s not about being right or wrong because some things I don’t agree with, but the job is to do that. So that’s what we do at Spread. We do a array of things from top secret stuff to uh you know helping your kids go to the dentist.
D: Yeah, I know I saw I saw the when I went to your website I saw that you guys were talking about um children’s um kids marketing dental marketing and I think it was so interesting to me because it’s such a I guess we have a phrase in Spanish that says, which means like, I guess, you know, it’s such a spread out thing, which I think is very fitting for the name of Spread, because you do a wide range of things. What I was curious about, and the first question that I actually have for you is, how did you actually make this into a collective structure? How did that actually happen? And how did you get so many different kinds of things to be a part of this one thing?
Q: Yeah, that’s been a work in progress and I think it’s always evolving. But what became to me very stressful was, so I, we do a lot of international work and a lot of our work, we We can’t publish. We can’t market ourselves with the stuff that we really do. So I needed to be out there without necessarily real to show. So we’re good at what we do. We can take starting out and we’ll make it famous. Do it the right way, the wrong way, the easy way, the hard way. We don’t judge on what your level of risk, your risk tolerance is. It’s called shock, right? And shock is supposed to spread. It’s when you want to say, hey, I got six months worth of budget here. It’s failing. You know, I’m… Eventually, I have nothing to lose. We can take that inspiration and turn it into a winning, and we’ve done it over and over, where you’re like, you have nothing to lose. Let’s go all out and let’s be controversial. Let’s create, let’s stir the pot. And then these companies have to turn around because of this. So I needed to put all of this in a way that was cohesive. And I still think it’s very broad because of all the things that we do. But because the things that I really would love to talk about, if we travel all over the world, if we, you know, we can take one picture and influence a thousand people, you know, and to me, that’s so amazing. But yet I can’t show you the picture because then you’ll know, oh, that was, you know, so I needed, I needed to, you know, make this legit. So that’s why I get the short answer to this. So the spread is, is we’re good at what we do. We just can’t tell you everything we do, but we’ll do it for you.
D: I think you’re muted. I think you might be muted, Danila.
Q: Sorry. I read your lips though, I agree.
D: Even though I’m a good looking guy, you know, what did I miss? Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this. Okay. What was it? I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was muted. And then it just kept yapping.
Q: But no, you’re funny. I like that. But I what I wanted to ask is, I think, you know, you guys do a lot of kind of the branding that you do is very much with kind of building that strong personal brand that you mentioned. I think with the competitive market that we live in today of everybody and their mother knowing and doing marketing with social media being a huge thing, the Internet, AI, all of these different sort of factors that come in. What do you actually do to help people stand out, to differentiate themselves, to be able to sort of see that red dot in a bunch of blues for the kind of environment and market that we have right now?
Q: Yeah, and I think that there’s, like I said, risk tolerance in the results that you’re looking for. Some people are, especially when you have a company and people that work for you. And it’s very stressful. And a lot of the decisions come from places of fear for a lot of clients where they’re afraid to take risks because they don’t want to mess something up or get in trouble. And I think what we do, one thing that is probably where we start, and I think we usually see if it’s a good fit or not for us, because also we’re not going to do a lot of work if we don’t You don’t have what it takes to really make it happen. You can tell from the beginning that this person, they’re too reserved, they’re too scared, they won’t be able to grow at the pace that they think they want to grow. They’re growing at the pace that they should grow, at the pace of a snail. So if you really want to grow exponentially, what we try to do is get you out of that fear state and let you know that it’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen here. People move on. Because I think once you start thinking about what if we fail, you’re going to fail. So you’ve got to go into, okay, you want to grow exponentially. What are you willing to do exponentially? What are you willing to risk? What is the sacrifice here? You’ve got to sacrifice something for another. And I think getting people out of that fear state, because we work with a lot of company leaders and a lot of company executives that all their lives have operated out of a fear state. Cautious uh you know that we were talking about earlier like you know being pc and what’s appropriate for the market and what what are we saying what terms are we using now and how are we describing this you know when that’s not a pioneer that is just adjusting to market conditions and they they don’t understand why their company’s not growing if you really want and you’re an executive I don’t care if it’s a fortune five hundred I’ve seen government officials. We’ve worked with some people in government that they’re like, you know, forget it. Let’s do it all. I don’t care. Boy out. Like, I don’t care. And you see when you reach that not being concerned with people and you just doing what’s right and what’s in your intuition quickly in a way that you can’t even manage. You’re like, wait, whoa, I didn’t expect this.
D: That makes sense!
Q: A quick story on I don’t know if you know Married with Children, too young for that, but Married with Children was a popular show here in the United States of like this family that was very, do you know them? Have you heard of them?
D: Yes, yes, I think I have.
Q: Yeah. Okay, so if no, people can Google them nowadays, but basically this family was all crazy, right? They were like, they were just dysfunctional. And at the time, on TV, you never saw. All the families on TV were, you know, proper families with a moral structure.
D: Yes.
Q: And here comes this family just like, people were outraged. Like, what? How can they? But this is what happened with that show. That show started as a family show. It’s a nice, beautiful family show. And then they were going to get canceled because it wasn’t doing well. So, I guess the people behind that, and I’m getting the story mixed up because a lot of different stories behind it but from what I hear is that they’re like we have nothing to lose let’s just destroy this family you know and they destroyed it in the most perfect way ever that it just became a hit for years and from there you know you have people like the Simpsons that Bart Simpson was an outrage like oh he said cowabunga and he’s skateboarding and people were outraged back there like how can a cartoon doing that and now it’s nothing that’s so like nice compared to what’s out there now but what I’m saying if you’re not in that edge and you’re not pioneering new you you’re just living other people’s crumbs like someone invented that now you’re using that someone invented that that you’re using that but say where do you where’s your place where’s your company’s place in this and if your company wants to be a leader a leader is not using other people’s things a leader is creating new things I don’t care if you’re selling donuts If you’re selling donuts and all your donuts look like the other donuts, then you just have a donut shop. If you want to be the leader in the donut world, people are like, man, these donuts, this is what’s up. You got to do like- Krispy Kreme, yeah.
D: Yeah, exactly, Krispy Kreme. And even then, I think they stopped evolving, right? So I think someone that comes with Krispy Kreme And dust it up. Maybe do a different shape of donuts. Maybe your donut shapes like hands. Now you’re talking about people going like, oh, man. And I think that that’s what we help companies with. Before we even start working, like you were talking about execution. Before we start executing, why are we doing this? Because you can do a lot of work that sits in your computer that’s beautiful, great, so good. It doesn’t help the company that you did it for. And it doesn’t help you. It’s just a waste of time. Yeah, maybe you pay some bills with some money that you got from that. But did you really grow? Are you a better artist now? Are you a better person? Are you a better company? Are you able to provide more jobs because your company grew so now you can hire a hundred more people? Are you doing all of that? And if that’s not your goal, then you probably don’t align with what we’re doing. Because that’s our goal. If your goal is just to get five customers to come in through your door per day just so you can sell your donuts.
Q: You know, we’re making body-shaped donuts. You know, these are handmade, like a hand-shaped donut. And we have a head. And now, you know, you can make your own little body with these. Kids love them because you can make your own little body with it. Now you’re like, wow, this is donuts? But, you know, we’re in the future. Now you have Wi-Fi. We put Wi-Fi on the donuts. And then you can, I don’t know, I’m just going off. But you know what I mean? Like, if you’re not in that pioneering stage, then do not try, your company is where it needs to be. And if you feel uncomfortable and you wanna get out of that, then you gotta sacrifice and you gotta stop, you gotta risk it. You gotta take that risk.
D: Yeah, that makes sense. I think a lot of the marketing sort of things that I see nowadays are very much trying to be PC, trying to not, like you said, kind of step on anybody’s toes. And I guess like, I don’t know, you can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I, I feel like you can stay neutral in, in, in a lot of stuff for the most part, but I think there comes a point where you have to sort of position yourself as a certain type of person with, with certain things and whether or not that brings or like loses clientele or loses sort of, or it gives backlash, I think sort of staying in this sort of neutral zone is also going to eventually backfire, if that makes sense.
Q: It makes absolute sense, Anela. Think about this. There’s nothing neutral. There’s not. I mean, the appearance of neutrality is the biggest lie we can tell ourselves. Like, there’s always… And there’s a spectrum and you’re never in the middle. There’s always something pulling you, pushing you. I mean, there’s nothing in the world that is neutral. Even in nature, there’s nothing neutral. I mean, the ocean is not neutral. I mean, there’s tides and it comes and it goes and there’s a constant flux. The universe is constantly moving. Everything in science is constantly in a movement. And to think that we can stay still and not go left or right or up or down, it’s just, it doesn’t make sense for companies that try to reach that neutrality. They end up just being just this bland. They end up, yeah, they be neutral over there where people don’t want them. They don’t want them. You know what I mean? They’re not patronizing them. That’s where neutrality takes you, to a place of invisibility where people don’t even know you exist.
D: Yeah, and you’re just kind of like there. I also feel like, I don’t know what you think, but I also feel like companies have kind of, I feel like there’s a new trend of trying to be woke, but not really. Or trends, yeah.
Q: Yeah. And I think like, regardless of where you fall in a political spectrum, right? Like if you feel like you’re more like leaning towards one thing or another, I think there’s this sort of wishy-washy-ness that I sense a lot of times from companies. To give you an example, like I feel like Disney has been doing that a lot with the live action stuff. A lot of stuff has been going down with like Snow White. And to me, it’s like what I see it from when I look at it from like a marketing perspective, what I think is, okay, You want to make these movies about like women empowerment and progressiveness and stuff. But then, you know, like you’re getting pushback from all people, a lot of people who think that this is not right. And then Disney kind of backtracks. And then I’m like, well, you know, you’re you’re positioning yourself from the get by making a movie with these statements. So my opinion is that if like you are going to make that as a statement, that is the political view that you want to put your company in. you have to stick with that throughout the whole thing and not backtrack when you get backlash from people who oppose that, because obviously people are going to oppose that. There are people who are not going to want to be a part of that, but you should have been knowing that when you made that choice. Does that make sense?
Q: Yeah. And they knew it. And that’s a great point that you bring because Disney’s a company that has always, um, you know, been pioneers in what they do. And they try to remain neutral. That’s what I would say about neutrality. And then once they go and do a little bit of this, then people are outraged. Yeah, they’re pissed off from whatever side that they’re doing, right?
D: Yeah.
Q: Exactly. But you got to see that Disney is not a thing or a person. Disney is a collection of people in there that make decisions. And these people come and go. And these decisions change as people come and go. And another thing you got to think of is that a lot of these decisions are made on a personal level and not as in society or marketing level. So, for example, I’m an executive there and I got this great job at Disney and I’m making big bang. And I just bought a new home and I got my new car and my wife got a new car and my kid is in private school. And I’m living pretty much, even though I’m making a lot of money, I’m spending a lot of money. And to keep my lifestyle, it requires this money. And I’m such at a high level that if I was to get fired from here, I’m probably never going to find a job in the next few months or even find another one. So now this is my question. I got to make a decision. Am I going to risk my lifestyle and this money that I’m getting to make these decisions or by doing the right thing or I’m going to protect.
D: My money. Myself by what. Exactly.
Q: So this is a collection of executives that make money. Expenses. So their decisions protects their job because the only way the CEO, Bob Iger, because he’s just so rich. He probably. he doesn’t care about the pushback that much because he can just retire ten times. So, you know, but that executive that’s below those big, big positions push these agendas or don’t, or backtrack. You know, they’re the ones, by the time it gets to the CEO, to ten committee meetings and to write it or not. And so that’s, I’m just to explain a little bit of how these decisions are made from like, They say fake wokeness or wokeness or not or whatever is the new hot thing now that we can embrace to be part of the community. So Disney, they’re just people that are afraid in one way or another. So they’re going to make the decision that’s going to keep their house paid, their mortgage paid.
D: I just think, I mean, I look at it from like a business standpoint. I think what you should always be doing, in my opinion, as a company is kind of have a strict set. I wouldn’t say strict, but you should always have like a set of what your company stands for. Even if your company is like, you know, going back to your donut shop, like, okay, yeah, donuts are not, they have nothing to do with politics, but, you know, you want to have still some sort of like value system that you adhere to. And then what you do from that point forward should always adhere to that value system. And whatever goes against it, you are going to vehemently say that is not what we stand for. And I think that consistency is, I think from the point of view of your audience, your clientele, the people that are consuming your product or service, it would be much more appreciated because then you are going to attract the same kind of people who are going to agree with those values. And I just don’t think that there’s a way for you to get… everybody on your side, or as much, you know, like, there’s always going to be people who are not going to be okay with what your brand does, who don’t like your product, who don’t like your service, who, who think that you’re bad, right? So you just want to sort of have that, that group of community. But I think by sort of backtracking, because you’re trying to save face, or trying to, like you said, kind of like all these board members that are just wanting to save their dollar, you’re actually creating much of a bigger problem because you’re pushing people away because you’re not keeping a single stance, right? Like if you’re going to be on the left, in my opinion, your political take is going to be like Disney, for example, is trying to take like a leftist political take. And that means they’re going to piss everybody off on the right side, right? So that means that’s who you’re catering to nowadays. And if you want to do it on the other side, that means you’re going to piss everybody off on the left side. But in my opinion, you’re just pissing everybody off on both sides. You’re still going to lose your job, if that makes sense.
Q: It makes sense. But see, there’s other forces as well. Because, yeah, Disney can take that stand all they want. But what happens when maybe… banking institutions don’t agree with them. And they’re like, you know what? We don’t like where you’re going, so we better cut ties. And now they may end up spending money or losing money. And then now they get, you know, like there’s consequences. But as I said, it’s a sacrifice, there’s consequences. And sometimes when you have board members and people that you have to pay dividends to, And they’re like, our dividend check is going down. We’re not making as much. Now you’re talking about a different kind of pressure that’s beyond external pressure you’re already getting. Now you’re getting these internal pressure points. And then on top of that, your ticket sales may fluctuate. Because now, you know, the people that don’t like you, they’re not going to go anyway. And the people that like you, they’re mad at you. And so… It’s hard for a company, especially that big, to take political stands because of that. Because if you don’t have that core people, the core decision makers inside saying, no matter what, we’re selling this shit and we don’t care. And I know that we’re getting shot at and bombarded and cannons are coming up, but we’re going to keep going. And I think what happens is you get a couple of shots, you know, somebody fired a cannon. Turn around. It’s going in circles.
D: Even a different that’s political, but also how values change. Back when legal, it was just it was nothing weird. That was the law and people had slaves and fast forward to now and we look back and we’re like, how could this be okay? The moral compass was that that was okay. You know, and I think today we are the same. There’s a lot of things that are okay or not okay that we’re going to look fifty years down the line and go, what were we thinking? You know, so I think, you know, you’re either a pioneer that’s going to go and live in the future or but you’re going to be affected in the now? Or are you going to just try to remain neutral, like you say, and try not to ruffle any feathers? I don’t know.
D: No, I think feather rufflers are the people who usually cause change. So I think you have to in order to progress, unfortunately. Like you said, neutrality, it only brings to boringness. And it’s not going to help. in the long run. And I think that’s a great way to end this podcast on because unfortunately, we are running out of time. But it’s been so great to have you. Before we finish it, I do want to give you the space to promote anything. If anything that we spoke about today resonated with our audience. The space is yours.
Q: For me is my space. Yeah, you can plug anything that you want.
Q: Oh, plug, plug. As I said, this is all mine. You know, I think if you’re… You know, because usually… I don’t even market, like I said, like I don’t, if you look up a page, it’s just a page that exists, but I don’t even do like an actual marketing because think I’ve been blessed that all of my clients bring me more clients and more clients, like to the point that I have to be really selective. Like I said, if you’re not aligning where we’re, when you, when you come with our company, And I work with a lot of different people that have a really great team that we all are on the same page. And if you’re not coming here to run and to do something amazing and to do something, if it’s quality graphic work, it’s not about just the quality. If you’re not going to do something that’s going to change your company, the world, if your aspiration is just to stay in business, maybe get a little bit more money. That’s not us. If you’re trying to take your business into a place that you don’t even imagine yet, that’s what we do. So you contact us, spread.company is the main website. We also have a million spreads, but spread.company, you’re probably going to get to wherever you need to get to. We also, I’m really pushing a lot about the nonprofits because I find it very rewarding, especially in, in, today’s climate that a lot of nonprofits are, they suck at marketing. I mean, just to be honest, like, but not because, um, they’re bad. It’s just, they’re hundred and a million things and they don’t think marketing comes last. It’s really come first, but it’s okay. That’s why we’re here. And this is something that we do that we don’t, this is something that we don’t charge. We create win-win scenarios for all. Obviously, your nonprofit has to align with what we believe. If you’re about kicking pads, we’re probably not going to work with you. We’re only going to consider companies that align with what we believe the world should be. If they’re working in a cause that aligns with what we’re doing and what we believe, then we will help you and not charge you. However, we will find a way, a way, a way that we can all win at the end. We always do. But what I’m saying is don’t be afraid to reach out. If you just, you know, if you’re like, you know, but we can’t afford it. It’s like there’s no afford it. There is no price. You know, it’s like just reach out. Tell us what your cost is, what you’re working on. And if we can’t help you, we have a ton of resources of other resources. people and places that you can go to get the marketing needs you need. Because you need marketing. You’re not fundraising because you have a lack of a great concept. You’re not fundraising because you are lacking marketing. You’re not presenting your idea and your concept as great as it is. You’re not presenting it in the right way. We can help you with that. And obviously we can help everyone. So thank you so much.
D: Thank you so much for being here. Your website on the description of this video so that people can easily access it so that they can reach out to you. And I’ve been so grateful that we had you on the podcast today. And everyone else, I will see you on the next episode. Thank you so much.
Q: Thank you. You have a lovely home, by the way.
D: Thank you. It’s a green. It’s not a. It’s not my home. It’s a green street. No. Thank you. I know, because I have that home, too.
Q: Yeah, yeah. This is my great home,
