Often times when everything starts going right for us, we lose a sense of who we are and can let distractions get in the way of our goals. We have CEO of Inertial Media, Tex Keith, here to talk about ways you can stay grounded and focused on the goals ahead.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path? – It’s an interesting story and one I never would have thought to occur. I grew up poor in Arizona with the dream of playing college football. I was a 104 pound freshman when I first started playing and had no desire to be in the business world. I worked extremely hard throughout high school and eventually got the opportunity to play as a quarterback for Humboldt State in northern California. When I was a freshman I came into a situation where I simply couldn’t afford to go to college and play football without some form of work. My dad and I had bought two laptops and he introduced to the idea of digital marketing so I decided to go 110% toward a marketing career path and it has led to being one of Tai Lopez’s top acclaimed students, business partnerships with a couple restaurants, a co owner of the national CBD company (Humboldt CBD) and speaking opportunities (Tedx talk in December) and a multitude of clients small and large.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story? Our company is the first brokerage for consulting and something we have coined as “Business Mavenry” which is stepping outside the role of just a marketer or consultant. With the brokerage, we train agents toward specific niches on the tactics we use to get clients, marketing strategies, we give them a proof of concept to work with and a name to stand behind. It works similar to how real estate works, you have the big name and the agents underneath in their respective niches. That way we don’t have a huge overhead and we keep the integrity of the work consistent to the way Inertial is. When it comes to business mavenry, we are huge on providing value to our clients. We once drove 17 hours just to pick up a tin-plated pot for a baker because we knew it would shave 3 hours off his baking time everyday. No one else does that.
What’s been one failure you’ve overcome? Originally Inertial was a team of four owners with equal equity rights to the company. We had a computer wiz, a salesman, a drone and videographer, and myself as the social media specialist. Our first client was a wakeup call to us because what I realized was you can fake experience but you can’t fake execution. We almost got sued by our very first client and in the heat of that, my business partners left me with the company to figure it out on my own. I was still playing college football so you can imagine the stress that came with that. After that, I took down the company and opened up a new one, rebranded it, and had protocol to follow with it.
What’s the one thing you see peers in your industry doing wrong? I see so many beginners claiming to be experts. For someone who has my experience and even seasoned business owners, we see right through it. The ones who are qualified to call themselves experts never do so. It’s interesting how that works. I would suggest staying true to yourself and honest with where you’re at in your journey. We will never run out of learning opportunities and the market is constantly changing; it’s almost impossible to be a true expert.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? I have used my success to shine some light on my home, Humboldt County, to be more of a figure there. We pick one struggling business each month and do some free work for them. We are going to build up a non-profit’s site in January.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started my company” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
1.) Be humble. Life humbled me early in my business career. I almost got sued and all of my original business partners fled the company, signing it over to me. No one is truly an expert in today’s world and the ones who have such a right to call themselves that don’t use a title like that. 2.) Listen. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Imagine the world today if we all realized that. They day I started listening was the day I became successful. 3.) Find a multitude of mentors, no one person has all of the answers. 4.) Planning is great but at the end of the day, execution is key. Just go out and do, it’s crazy how much you can learn along the way. 5.) Invest in yourself. I have my team read everyday and we invest a lot of time and money in our development.
What’s something you do when things go wrong? I think about how far we’ve come and all the people who have supported me in the past. I kept going then, I can keep going now!
How can our readers follow you on social media? My Facebook is Tex Keith and my Instagram handle is “@thetexkeith”
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thanks for having me!