Book Club Discussion - The Marketing Book by Jason McDonald

Mickey and I discuss The Marketing Book by Jason McDonald

Some key points-

Differences between B2G, B2C, and B2B Marketing
Five discovery paths prospects may use to find you
The weirdest disclaimer we’ve ever seen!

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s sweet. All right. We’ll open with, we’ll do our pitches and then I’ll ask you about the book and then you can just tell me what you think. Does that work?

Paula Williams:

That works. If you have any news to share, you can share it. If not, that’s fine. That’s totally up to you.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. I guess for the book club, for all the crew out there, I just got married, so really excited. Mom came down to Vegas and John was here too-

Paula Williams:

Yay.

Mickey Gamonal:

… and all her family and friends, and my family and friends. It was great. It wasn’t a big to do just due to the COVID situation, but we got everybody that we could together and everybody who made it was happy they went, from what I could tell. It was great. There’s a brand new Gamonal, so I’m pretty excited.

Paula Williams:

Very, very thrilled to have Sheena as part of the family and Sheena’s family as part of the family. We couldn’t have asked for a better situation. It was a beautiful wedding and everybody cried and it was wonderful. We’re glad to be here in Las Vegas. I’m in my fabulous hotel room and Mickey is in his fabulous new home in Las Vegas.

Mickey Gamonal:

Okay. We were going to meet together, but in-laws just left, and ins and outs and all sorts of stuff, new house to begin with. This works out better for now, but one day we’ll have you over for a book club for sure.

Paula Williams:

Fantastic. That sounds like fun. We don’t have to make a big deal out of it. It’s fine.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. My name is Mickey Gamonal. I am the owner, and my Facebook says I am the head chef at Gamonal Tutors. Serving up knowledge for all those who need it. We do ASVAB preparation right now, and we just started our September class. Next month is going to be October. We’re really excited for each new month we’re growing, and it’s getting better. It’s been great. If you know anybody who’s joining the military and wants to do so at a high level, anybody, whether they pass or fail the ASVAB, I think they could benefit from either directly enrolling in my program or looking at some of my free products. There’s a lot of stuff out there just to help as many people as possible. Gamonal Tutors for all your ASVAB needs.

Paula Williams:

Fantastic. I think even if someone feels pretty comfortable about the ASVAB, they would really benefit from your program because of the mentorship. I mean, just even talking to somebody who is outside of their own program that has been through bootcamp and has been through OCS and those things, and can kind of give people an idea of what to expect. I think they would benefit from it, even from that perspective, much less getting a better score on the ASVAB, is a wonderful thing as well.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah. I agree. I think one of the things that people think is they’re like, “Oh, I have a recruiter. My recruiter will answer all my questions.” The recruiter will. I mean, they get paid to answer your questions. However, the recruiter, the E-R in recruiter is because of what they do, their verb is to recruit.

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

Their main agenda is pretty upfront. It’s going to be to recruit you. Whereas if you talk to somebody who’s already in, whether you want to talk about what happens at basic training or something like that, you know that you’ll have a little less bias. I mean, I love the Army. I’m still happy to be in it and everything like that, but I have no interest in letting anybody into the Army who doesn’t want to be there, because it’s pretty bad news if you get stuck in something you don’t want to be in. I’m happy to be that unbiased advisor or whatever you guys need.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly, because you work for them, not for the Army.

Mickey Gamonal:

Exactly, and not in this capacity. Right. Gamonal Tutors is completely unaffiliated with the United States Army-

Paula Williams:

Fantastic.

Mickey Gamonal:

… does not represent the views and opinions.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly. Separation is important. I’m Paula Williams. I am Mickey’s mom, and I am also the president of ABCI. ABCI is Aviation Business Consultants International. We do marketing for aviation companies. Our mission is to help aviation companies sell more of their products and services, which is really important nowadays because the economy stinks. Well, stinks is an interesting word. What’s a good economy for some people is a bad economy for others. Everybody is going through some stuff with the COVID situation and other things like that. They’re having to adjust their products and services, and they’re certainly having to adjust their marketing so that if they used to do all the trade shows and all of the magazines and things like that, that’s not working for you anymore. In 2020, everything has changed and so a lot of aviation companies are having to adapt to a more digital model, improve their websites, their social and other kinds of things like that. That’s where we come in. We also do sales training for aviation professionals, brokers, and others who need to learn how to sell for maybe the first time in their life, right?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah.

Paula Williams:

That’s a lot of fun.

Mickey Gamonal:

[inaudible 00:05:48]. There’s been a lot of shakeup, I would imagine, particularly with the aviation industry that you’re going to find out who exactly is, who does what and have to reevaluate those roles.

Paula Williams:

Right. You know, they said during the last recession that you can separate the good companies from the bad, because a bad company can survive in good times. Only the good companies would survive the last recession. We’re going through that again now, I think. There’ve been a lot of fun ideas come up in aviation that have been good, bad and weird ideas, some of which were successful and some of which were not, but this is really what separates the good ideas from the not so good ideas.

Mickey Gamonal:

No, I think you’re right. That’s what I was saying. Going to the Army right now, when I go to drill, and it’s National Guard so they only work two weeks out of the year, one weekend a month, so not super regularly. But essentially COVID gave everybody who doesn’t want to show up to drill an out. You can just say that, “Oh, I’ve been around somebody who sneezed once,” and then poof, you don’t have to go to work.

Paula Williams:

[inaudible 00:07:02].

Mickey Gamonal:

I think that’s the case with almost all jobs right now. Anybody you see at work, even if they say that they hate their job right now, you know that they like it enough not to get out of it, or maybe they like hating it enough to show up. Either way, they’re going to work in spite of opportunity not to, that’s for sure.

Paula Williams:

Right. Exactly. Everybody you see in a restaurant or a hotel or anywhere else, you need to respect the fact that they’re doing probably more work than they ever have, under stranger circumstances than they ever have and adapting to rules that they’ve never had to deal with before. It’s time to break out the flexibility and the compassion, I guess, for people who are working.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I wish… this is where the hazard pay argument comes up. I know in aviation it’s classically like, “Oh, I don’t know. If we should give everybody hazard pay, then who makes money, where’s the money going to go?” But at the same time, people who are showing up to work today are pretty committed employees.

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

These are people who will go the extra mile.

Paula Williams:

Right. That’s for sure. Great. Well, this week’s book, The Marketing Book by Jason McDonald. You know how some of the books that we have talked about this year, in fact, most of the books that we’ve talked about this year, we’ve said this should not be the first book that you read about sales and marketing because they were so challenging, or so complex, or so specific about one thing or another. This is the opposite. This is actually a pretty good entry-level marketing book that gives a pretty good overview of what marketing is, and what it does and everything else. The only problem I have with it was mainly from an aviation perspective, and that is this is assuming for the most part business to business… sorry, business to consumer retail marketing. It assumes you’re selling Coke or Pepsi or bubblegum or some other product to a consumer, which you are doing Mickey because you’re selling to end students, end product users.

Mickey Gamonal:

You think that it doesn’t talk enough about business to business sales?

Paula Williams:

Yeah. They have one chapter that says here’s business to business, here’s business to government, here’s business to consumer, and then the rest of the book kind of throws the other ideas out the window and just talks about business to consumer, which is fine if you’re selling charter flights or courses or something along those lines. That’s pretty good.

Mickey Gamonal:

I feel like particularly with me, for my business and I think for anybody who gets into business, I think, I mean, I don’t know if everybody has the same motivation as I do. I know one day I want to, and I don’t know if this will ever come, but you sell out and move to Mexico, right? You sell your business for that ridiculous amount of money and then you go sip Mai Tais for the rest of your days, like Oceans 11 style. I don’t know if that’s what everybody typically wants, but I mean, to get your start, to get to that point where you can sell off, or do more business to business work, I feel like you need to have that consumer to business foundation. Do you agree with that?

Paula Williams:

Yeah. Although I do think most of the college courses and textbooks and everything else are kind of assuming that this is a consumer foundation. It’s almost everybody that comes into marketing from an academic point of view learns that first, but I don’t think you have to learn that first. You know what I mean?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah.

Paula Williams:

I think there’s a lot of people that fall into marketing from finance or from business, or from being a pilot or from being a tech and then suddenly deciding they need to sell something, and then they learn it from being thrown in the fire. Those people will start with business to business, or business to government, and they do just fine. I don’t know, Mike, but they shouldn’t be taking books like this too seriously, and they shouldn’t be taking college courses and expecting to apply what works for Coke or Pepsi to what they’re doing.

Mickey Gamonal:

Right. There’s definitely a three step ahead feeling, I think. If you’re selling to a business or to the government, I think you’re further along in the lifeline, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. I mean, I think, especially with COVID, if anything, we’re kind of reshaping the lifeline, or the walk, crawl, run kind of progression of how business is done, you know?

Paula Williams:

Yeah.

Mickey Gamonal:

Absolutely.

Paula Williams:

I mean, the business to government section is really short for a good reason. That’s because if you’re selling to the government, there’s a specific process you’d go through. They do an RFP, you respond to the RFP. It’s a very regimented process. You really can’t… I mean, the purpose of that is to not have people marketing to the government. I mean, that’s the perception, is that nobody actually markets to the government, they just do an RFP and they get what they want without having people lobby them or market to them because that just looks bad. If you were to sell your courses to the government in some way in the future at some point, it would probably be something like that type of negotiation where you would do a… they would need something, you would respond to it and say here’s a solution to this problem, and then you would fit your solution into their RFP process. Business to government is almost not even marketing. It’s really just selling, direct sales, person to person.

Mickey Gamonal:

Wow.

Paula Williams:

[crosstalk 00:13:01].

Mickey Gamonal:

What is an RFP? Can you break that down a little bit?

Paula Williams:

Request For Proposal.

Mickey Gamonal:

Okay. Have you done any government work or have you helped a client to get government work?

Paula Williams:

We’ve had a couple of clients that specialized in government work, and John’s done government work with a couple of companies that he’s done, with AMMS and some others, but he’s not on today’s call, so we can’t ask him. We kind of got out of that business because it is so different from regular marketing, if we call that regular marketing. It’s almost exactly a sales process where somebody decides this would be a really great idea, we need to get somebody to do this. You and some government official would come to that conclusion and then the paperwork is almost, let’s make this fit.

Mickey Gamonal:

Wow.

Paula Williams:

If we have X amount of budget. You have X amount of a thing that you want to provide. Let’s figure out if we can write an RFP in response to the RFP that satisfies all of the boxes, checks off all the boxes for all of the different checks and balances in the government process, and then they would buy, they would contract with you for your service.

Mickey Gamonal:

Wow, that’s crazy. I mean, that makes sense because of course if you… Everybody’s like, oh, anti lobbyist, the anti lobbyists, but if you saw a Pepsi commercial that sold only to Congress members, everybody would be like, well, what the heck?

Paula Williams:

Right. That is such cheese. That would be incredibly inefficient and also it would look bad, so that is done in a completely different way. You really can’t advertise a service to government, that’s a totally different process. You can make it available. Some of the things in the book like, if a government employee is looking for a particular product and service, you want to be the first one that shows up on search engine results for that. They will find you and they will contact you and then take it from there. As an example, Trisoft Covers, we’ll give them a shout out. They have these red cylindrical edge covers for F-16s, F-35s, any aircraft that ever existed. One of their clients is the US government because they buy these things for aircraft in the hangars to keep them from getting hangar rash from… or having people walk into a sharp point on an aircraft while it’s in the hangar. Excuse. The process for that is someone in the government will look up I need F-16 bumper covers or something along those lines. Joe Garland, Trisoft Covers shows up pretty close to first on the list, if not first on the list for that specific items. Then he gets a phone call and then they have that conversation. They figure out what they need to do to make that work. That’s a B 2 G, business to government sales process.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool.

Paula Williams:

Then the business to consumer is what you’re doing, where you’re selling directly to a consumer. Although you do have some business to government as well, where you’re talking with recruiters and other folks as influencers, and talking about how to help them do their job better by getting them in touch with… getting you in touch with students you can help in order to help them do their job. You’re doing that, right?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, I do. I speak with recruiters pretty regularly. I talk to three to five recruiters, and I’m trying to up it to more per week just because like you say, they have so much influence. There’s a couple of recruiter YouTube stars out there. It’s kind of a weird underground world, but a lot of people have questions about going to basic training and stuff like that, so they YouTube it. There’s a bit of competition for who is the Army YouTube star and who is the Navy YouTube star. It’s kind of cool to see that these… that is such a foreign job position to a recruiter who would have been alive 50 years ago. That doesn’t make any sense. The best recruiter 50 years ago was the guy who showed up to schools and got the most kids to sign up, but now you’re taking into account how many followers they have or how much media they have when considering who’s the best recruiter. A lot of these guys are just social media stars. It’s really, really impressive. It’s pretty cool to see.

Paula Williams:

I think almost all of our clients could benefit from becoming YouTube stars if they have the proclivity to do that and if they’re willing and able to make that happen for whatever their specialty is. I mean, you could be the YouTube star of ASVAB, who knew?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah. Well, there’s competition for that too. I’m trying… I’m in contact with the people who are better than me, which is a good place to be. We are all buddy buddy somehow.

Paula Williams:

[crosstalk 00:18:37]. It sounds like it’s a really weird little small world and most niches are, where they have just a few people. You should know, I guess, who in your niche is the top 10 or the top five YouTube stars and bloggers and podcasters and things like that and get to know them because there’s usually plenty of business to go around. It’s just a matter of talking each other up and figuring out what everybody’s specialty is so that you’re giving each other the kind of work that you want.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, absolutely. I should probably try to reach out to them too. I think that it is something that goes overlooked in most business, is they don’t because you get caught up in reaching out to consumers and pounding the pavement and going door to door when there are natural flows of your ideal client out there. They look in the same place for a reason, it’s because they’re looking for what you have. It’s really tough to conceptualize. Especially for me, I really struggle with getting out of my shoes and into somebody else’s, particularly an 18 year old because when I was 18, I just wouldn’t spend on my future. I would spend thousands of dollars at college, but that’s because it’s just expected.

It’s crazy to think about now what the mentality was, what the paradigm was and how you want to shift that. I’m sure many of you guys who have your own businesses, you create great products and it’s like, why don’t they realize how great this product is?

Paula Williams:

Right?

Mickey Gamonal:

Because nine times out of 10 it’s well worth the money. You’re not hustlers and peddlers, you’re people who are trying to make a positive difference. You want people to come away from working with you happy. That’s usually a good sign. That’s usually the only sign you need to know that your business is worthwhile at the end of the day.

Paula Williams:

Right. Oh, absolutely. Everybody got into business to solve a problem most likely, because there was something that needed to be solved, but everybody is also competing against the status quo because everybody is living without your product right now. You want them to change their behavior to use your product or service. It is the easiest thing in the world to stay where you are. It is the hardest thing in the world to get somebody to do something different than what they’re doing. People underestimate the difficulty of that inertia, breaking that inertia all the time.

Mickey Gamonal:

I mean, you really are someone who’s inventing a new method of swimming. It just doesn’t make sense to anybody, like why would you do it like that? You have to build everything around, “Oh, it’s a good idea to do it this way.”

Paula Williams:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. What else did you… what did you like from the book besides that? Were there any good major chapter highlights or anything?

Paula Williams:

Yeah. I think probably my favorite chapter was section three, how to make yourself easy to find. Actually it was a set of chapters about the five discovery paths, and I think he did a really good job of explaining the five discovery paths, meaning the five ways that people find you for the first time. One is search, two is reviews, three is eWOM, or word of mouth or electronic word of mouth, meaning somebody shared something or an influencer said something. Number 16 is interruption or advertising, meaning you actually stuck something into their Facebook scroll or into their stream of consciousness or into their TV program or whatever, so you interrupted something that they were watching. Number four is browse. No, that’s number five, sorry. Number five is browse, so the power of being next to something that they’re looking for at the time that they’re looking for it.

Search is pretty simple, that’s search engine optimization, or being the one on YouTube that everybody looks for for ASVAB, as an example.

Mickey Gamonal:

[inaudible 00:23:12].

Paula Williams:

Search is pretty simple. Reviews are getting more and more important, and there’s also a lot of effort to make them a lot more credible than they have been in the past. There’s been a lot in the news about fake reviews on Amazon and other things, and so they’re cracking down and deleting reviews like nobody’s business if people are getting them in ways that are unscrupulous.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, absolutely. No, I got some tea the other day and it said you have to leave us a five star review and we’ll send you another pack or another full product. It’s like, geez. I guess it’s 200% of the value if you leave a five star review, then it’s definitely a great product, but who really knows. That five star slot is really highly coveted as well, it should be.

Paula Williams:

Right, but giving people, compensating people for reviews is kind of the problem that they’re having, either by sending them more product or by giving them any kind of compensation for… It doesn’t matter. If you ask for a review, you’re probably going to get a good one. They’re kind of becoming more specific about the ways that you can ask for reviews and whether or not you can reward people for reviews. You can certainly ask, but whether you can reward them for it really depends on the platform and really depends on whether or not you get reported by your competition or whatever, you know?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah. That’s true.

Paula Williams:

Right. [inaudible 00:24:54].

Mickey Gamonal:

Everybody has a seat at the table now. There’s all sorts of, this is fair, this is unfair, and then you kind of battle that.

Paula Williams:

Right. Then influencers or eWOM or word of mouth, that would be like your recruiters. Tanis Aircraft Products has Michael Wiskus. He’s an airshow guy, one of the aerobatics superstars. If you’re in the aerobatics world, you know Mike Wiskus. He’s a rock star and things like that, and he has the Lucas Oil and he’s got the Tanis Aircraft covers on his plane. That would be an example of how that works and that’s… can be really, really effective. There’s a guy in one of our mastermind groups that ran the website findanycelebrity.com. Basically, it gets you in touch with their agents and everything else. A lot of them are less expensive than you would think, especially these days, so if you can find somebody who is really into, or has maybe played a role in a movie that is close to what you’re really after, and get that person to do a commercial for you, it would be really… or even just a five second YouTube thing or anything else that can be… or TikTok nowadays.

Mickey Gamonal:

Sure. That’s a good point. It’s crazy how many methods there are out there. That’s good.

Paula Williams:

But those influencers, that’s basically borrowing the credibility from someone else. If you have “Sully” Sullenberger or Harrison Ford or anybody who’s big in aviation, Buzz Aldrin, any of those guys talk your product, that’s a huge deal. Mickey, if you had anybody who was a movie star who starred in any of the big military movies, that would probably be fantastic. Even more really recognizable people would go, “Oh yeah, that’s that guy.” Subconsciously, you can tie that together as this guy knows a lot about the military, even if he was just an actor in a movie. You don’t really think that through, your brain just absorbs it and you carry forward with that. That’s crazy.

Mickey Gamonal:

Wow. I guess I’ll have to. It really is like a game of research and knowing what methods are available to you that’s around.

Paula Williams:

Right? Exactly. Then interrupt or advertise. This is what we’ve been doing a lot of with the Facebook ads, where you’re actually injecting something into somebody’s day where they wouldn’t have ordinarily come across what you do. They do because you targeted them by demographics and by location and by any number of other things and said, “Here’s a person that I think would be interested in what I have to do or what I have to sell, so I’m going to stick an ad in their scroll. As they’re scrolling through Facebook, they’re going to come across my ad and I’m going to interrupt what they were doing and make them click on this button and talk to me because what I [inaudible 00:28:09] is that important.” It’s actually kind of a big ask when you think about it because they were on Facebook for some other reason besides you, so it has to be a really, really good ad in order to get them to click on it and make them do what you want. Stop what they were doing and do what you want them to do right now.

Mickey Gamonal:

Right.

Paula Williams:

That’s [crosstalk 00:28:34].

Mickey Gamonal:

It’s frustrating, right? Because as business owners, we always build these things. We build this blog or this letter that we think, “Oh, we’ll send that out into the world, and then we’ll have to turn away business because we’re just going to be so busy.”

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

That is so rarely the case. That’s something you see in the movies, but it, your phone, I mean, for me personally, I haven’t had that situation where my phone was ringing off the hook and I got so many people coming in. Maybe one day. I’m sure one day you’ll accidentally hit it. Right now I’ve been reading the Bezos letters and one of his big things is that if you continually invest in trying to hit a home run, you don’t have to hit a home run every time. If you hit a home run one in a billion times, but that’s a billion, that’s a ROI of a billion, you’re breaking even. That’s well worth it, just for the acclaim of hitting that home run.

Paula Williams:

[crosstalk 00:29:39].

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s pretty insightful. What else from the book? Those are pretty good, those five methods.

Paula Williams:

Last one is browse, so the power of being next to something that other people are looking for. If you were looking for… They do this in grocery stores all the time. They put the dip next to the chips, and they put a little section of chips and dip next to the beer. What are people likely to want when they’re using my product? In your case, I’m thinking a lot of the 18 year olds who are interested in going into the military love these stores like Cabela’s and things like that, where they have the backpacks and the survival gear and the MREs. It’s like they like to go out on the weekends and play with their friends and do the Army thing. If there would be a way that you could get your materials into those stores next to that stuff, where the kids are looking for their fun weekend and bragging about how they’re going to be in the military, that would be an ideal place to put your advertising.

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s a great idea. Go to 5.11 Tactical and try to get those guys into it. What about aviation wise, where that’s a big sale? I mean, those things are usually really expensive, right?

Paula Williams:

Oh yeah. You can do that digitally also, so you could target everybody who likes 5.11 for a Facebook ad.

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s a good idea [crosstalk 00:31:26].

Paula Williams:

Everybody who’s 11, or 18 to whatever, 22 to 25, that kind of thing. There’s this segment of those people that would be your people. That’s another example of that browse proximity principle, right?

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah.

Paula Williams:

Aviation, what’s interesting is a lot of times it coincides with Harley-Davidson or it coincides with yachts. You go to a yacht show and you’ll find aviation people who are there as well. You go to the NBAA shows and you’ll see yacht people. You’ll see putters, so a lot of golf things. It really depends on whether it’s a business thing or whether it’s a recreation thing. Those all were recreation things.

If you’re into a business situation, there’s a lot of aviation business that is connected to oil and gas. Those oil and gas folks that are in South Dakota that are in the Midwest and things like that, working in those oil fields and other things, or especially in the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico. You can be next to the travel ads for book your next flight with us to the Gulf, those kinds of things, and then, “Oh, by the way, you could be flying there yourself,” and “Oh, by the way, we’ve got helicopter charters going out to the oil rigs, other kinds of things, so that you can deliver your packages or whatever.” There’s a lot of stuff going on. That’s proximity in terms of aviation as well.

Mickey Gamonal:

Nice. That’s great.

Paula Williams:

Right. Probably the last thing I wanted to share from the book is just the copyright and disclaimer, this is the most ridiculous disclaimer I have seen in my life. It says, “This book is about practical marketing. While it gives advice on marketing, please understand that any steps you may take in your own business may make your own business better or worse, stronger or weaker, or may even have a catastrophically negative effect on your business. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners and used for illustrative purposes only.” You’re flipping through the third page and you’re going, “Why the heck would I read this book?”

Okay. Well, this is super honest. I mean, that’s cool, but dang.

Mickey Gamonal:

Right. A catastrophic effect on your business. That’s usually, it’s probably not what people are looking for when they’re reading that book. That’s probably not the endgame.

Paula Williams:

Exactly. No. I mean, but you think about that and you think, well, that’s true of any book that you read, why do they have to include that, and does that make this book more trustworthy or less? You read any book and you apply what it says in a bad way to your life or your business or anything else, you could really mess things up. Books are powerful, but that was just kind of a stark reminder of, “Crap. Why am I reading this?”

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s great. I mean, I like the sincerity in a time where it’s all, get the people to buy your stuff. It’s pretty rare that you even see somebody pump the brakes until after they have your money, which I guess the book already does. If you read that first page, you have theoretically [crosstalk 00:34:53].

Paula Williams:

[crosstalk 00:34:53] read the copyright disclaimer anyway, and I just kind of accidentally did. I don’t usually do that.

Mickey Gamonal:

Well then. The word catastrophic jumps out of a copyright disclaimer pretty quickly though.

Paula Williams:

It did. Go plug away now.

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s attention grabbing.

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

Well, cool. It sounds like a great book. I didn’t get a chance to read this one, but I want to. I’ll have to check it out sometime soon. That’s pretty [crosstalk 00:35:25].

Paula Williams:

Out of the ones that we read, I think this is probably one that’s a little bit more relevant for you than some of the others, but I’m really looking forward to… In October, we usually do our survey and list out all the books that everybody has even thought of and get everybody to vote on them. That’s always a fun time of year because then we get the list for the next year.

Mickey Gamonal:

All right. Then we’ll see if anybody shows up, right? I mean, these guys like to, they like to recommend books, man. Shoot.

Paula Williams:

Oh yeah. You should read this.

Mickey Gamonal:

Do they like…

Paula Williams:

They have no idea whether they read it or not, so that’s fun.

Mickey Gamonal:

Oh, [crosstalk 00:36:02].

Paula Williams:

Everybody kind of gets a pass because it’s a holiday week and a lot of people are gone, and things are going on.

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s true.

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. Well, I guess we’ll just promo out and we’re good.

Paula Williams:

Sounds good.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. My name is Michael Gamonal. I’m the owner of Gamonal Tutors, where we tutor future military leaders in leadership as well as academically scoring the highest possible score on the ASVAB so that you can get the best job that… you get the job of your dreams. If you’re signing up to serve your country, you might as well make the most of it because you’re going to be in it for a while. It’s a sacrifice no matter how you slice it, so make sure you’re sacrificing in the right direction. Gamonal Tutors for that.

Paula Williams:

Perfect. I mean, it’s not a sacrifice at all. I mean, it is a sacrifice no matter what you do for the military, but I think you’re doing the military a disservice if you don’t get into the right job, because if you’re wasting your talents in the military, as well as wasting your talents anywhere else, then you are not doing the highest and best purpose of your life, no matter how you slice it. You want to get the best score in the ASVAB you can, you want to get the best job you can, you want to be doing something you want to be doing and that you’re good at, because otherwise you’re just, what is it called, hiding your light under a bucket, and wasting your energy.

Mickey Gamonal:

No, absolutely. I mean, in that you’re at the same level, you got that same empowerment idea.

Paula Williams:

Absolutely.

Mickey Gamonal:

Maybe you just want to help people reach their goals, that’s so important. It’s such a value for everyone involved. That’s great.

Paula Williams:

If you’re going to be spending, committing four to six years of your life, you might as well be doing something you enjoy and that you’re good at.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah.

Paula Williams:

Right. I’m Paula Williams, ABCI, and we help aviation companies sell more of their products and services. We are starting up another aviation sales professional course in October. If you have an inclination toward sales or if you don’t have an inclination towards sales, but you find yourself needing to make more sales to keep your company afloat, especially in these crazy times, sales skills are becoming more and more helpful. I think in almost any job you’re selling your ideas or you’re selling your concepts, you are having to get people to agree with you. All of that is in sales, in my opinion. Every problem is a sales or marketing problem. You can fix everything that’s wrong with the world if you can do good sales and good marketing.

Mickey Gamonal:

True that. True that, that people wouldn’t be so concerned about like, “Oh, I’m wasting money on this, that, and the other thing.” If the marketing and sales was done properly, nobody would waste any money. Nobody would ever come away feeling like they’ve lost out on value.

Paula Williams:

Right.

Mickey Gamonal:

That’s a really good point.

Paula Williams:

Helping people make good decisions is not a bad thing. Great.

Mickey Gamonal:

Cool. You’re kicking off another class in October, huh?

Paula Williams:

Yeah. We’re going to kick off another class in October. We have demand for it. We will. If we don’t, we’re going to wait until January. We will see what we end up with.

Mickey Gamonal:

Do you have people reaching out for you for it at this point?

Paula Williams:

We did. We’ll see how serious they are as we get closer to the class start date. It is a pretty rigorous program, so we do want people who are going to just stick with it because we do have a lot of interaction in that program. We want people who can depend on each other if you finish that together, because you end up being kind of a team as you come out of the other end of this. It’s kind of disruptive to have people drop out, so we’re kind of being rough on people at the beginning. Are you sure that you can commit three to five hours a week for the next six weeks? That’s the thing.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, absolutely. All right, cool.

Paula Williams:

Anyway, congratulations and good to see you, and we’ll be talking with you again soon.

Mickey Gamonal:

Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll talk to you later, mom.

Paula Williams:

All right.

Mickey Gamonal:

Bye.

Paula Williams:

Bye.