← The Futur with Chris Do
The Futur with Chris Do
I Built a Business With No Degree, No Plan, and Cancer (w/ Jennie Smythe)
00:45:01
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- [00:00]
A
It was a terribly painful decision to make because I felt like I was letting myself down, letting my family down. But I just. I just knew I wasn't going to follow that path. I'm Jenny Smythe, and you're listening to the Future.
- [00:19]
B
Today. I'm speaking to Jenny Smythe. She wrote the book Becoming. This is hard for me to say. Becoming Gurla. Is it how it's a hit?
- [00:27]
A
So it's kind of a running joke in the office because I have always said gorilla. So I think both are right. And I like the idea of guerrilla because it perfectly explains everything that we've been trying to accomplish.
- [00:44]
B
Yes. And I'm getting to learn more about you. You're a digital marketer, so there must be something related to, like, guerrilla marketing tactics. And for people who don't understand where this word comes from, I think it comes from the military, like guerrilla warfare, where there's an asymmetrical battle where one force is much bigger than yours. So if you try to meet them, force for force, you will lose. You have to get inventive. You have to think outside the box. And I think that's where that comes from. It's appropriated for marketing. Is that your understanding, too?
- [01:12]
A
That's exactly right. And it's meant to be. It was a. A tactical title for my company, which is Guerrilla marketing. Yeah.
- [01:20]
B
I love this subtitle here. It's in. In your book. It says, my journey to unleashing good in real life, online and others. And in the. In the very first chapter, there's a qu et says, do good. Do good, Elliot. Right. So let's talk about that philosophy, and then I would love to get into your backstory.
- [01:36]
A
Yeah.
- [01:37]
B
What is this whole thing about unleashing good in real life and in the world?
- [01:40]
A
Like a lot of people, when we went through Covid together and digital became our primary way of communicating. For us, being digital marketing people, that's always been a huge priority for us is digital communication. But it really sunk in on the personal side during COVID And I think for me, I have pretty tough skin in this world just because of what I do for a living. But I was tremendously affected by how people were speaking to each other online and how people were losing friends and alienating family members and, you know, having a hard time publicly. And I just wanted to. I wanted to at least present an alternative and some perspective on how we can change how we were treating each other.
- [02:47]
B
So I was just glancing over the book, and I was talking about your backstory. You've had to overcome a bit of adversity. But the part that caught my eye was like, how you got into the music industry. Can you tell that story?
- [02:59]
A
From the time that I could remember, wanted to be in the music industry and had a bunch of broken roads to try to try to find that. And then I ended up at a music conservatory and I had applied in all of the official ways for my internship opportunities, and I was hitting a lot of dead ends. And I was speaking to fellow music industry budding, budding dreamers about it, and one of my friends said, ashley, I know somebody. And it happened to have been an adult dancer. And so I. Her name. Well, she said her name was Nikki. To this day, I'm still not sure what her real name is, but I'm extremely grateful for her. And I talked talk about her a lot. But Nikki was. Actually got on the telephone with me and set up a meeting that ended up being successful. And she gave me amazing career advice on the way out. But it was. It was one of those situations where you were just like, how. How did that. How did that all happen? And it was a really good lesson that you just never know where, you know, inspiration and connection is going to come from and who's going to help you. And so it's just important to keep an open mind.
- [04:26]
B
How old are you in this moment and where are you living?
- [04:29]
A
I am living in Phoenix, Arizona, and I believe I am 19ish.
- [04:35]
B
My business coach used to say this to me all the time. You are two people away from someone changing your life. And that's why it's important for us to develop great relationships with people, to be genuine, to be sincere in how we connect with folks, but also to not to be afraid of asking for what we want because somebody might know somebody who might know somebody. And it sounds like that's exactly what happened here.
- [04:59]
A
Yes. And it's been happening to me for 30 years. And we had a party in Nashville this week, a book release party. And it's. I said it in my speech. I basically said that you might not know the person standing next to you, but you do, and ask them, because everybody here is connected through just one person. So it was really fun to watch pockets of people talk to each other after that. And this week after the party, I've had countless texts where they're like, hey, so what you said. And I actually said something to the person next to me. And you'll never believe it, but we go to the same gym or, you know, we actually have a friend in common or whatever. And so that was. That was reaffirming.
- [05:49]
B
At 19 years old, are you picking up, packing up and getting out of town and moving? Is that. Is that what's happening here?
- [05:56]
A
That's exactly what's happening. With everything I owned in the back of a Jeep and, like, enough money to live on for one month. That was it.
- [06:05]
B
At 19, I'm taking that. Unless you graduated college really early, you're not in college.
- [06:10]
A
I had a really hard time with college. I went to college and became supremely disenchanted with my experience after a couple of strange academic happenstance. You know, things that happened that I just was like, is it. What am I paying for? You know, I was paying for my own college. I just was so miserable. And I ended up dropping out. And then I. I floundered for a bit until I found the direction that I needed to have, but that was. It was painful.
- [06:53]
B
For context, what year are we talking about here when you're deciding to drop out of school and do something different?
- [06:59]
A
Late 90s.
- [07:00]
B
Late 90s. Okay. I think it's always important, especially because people are tuning in at different times in their life. Like, well, why didn't you do this and that? Like, context, everybody.
- [07:09]
A
Yeah.
- [07:09]
B
Okay, I have this question, which is, when you decide school ain't for me, or at least this school is not for me, were you concerned about your job prospects? Because in the late 90s, it would be kind of this thing where it'd be difficult for you to go and get a real job making decent money without a degree.
- [07:26]
A
Oh, 100%. And remember, this is just before the Internet. You know, like, the Internet was just. Just so close, but you were still expected to apply to things in person. You were expected to have your degree. Like it was. Yeah, it was real. Not only was it scary professionally, but it was scary personally. Like, I. Not only. Both of my grandmothers are college graduates. My mom has a master's degree. My dad was a head of marketing for a big oil company. My sister is, you know, in school at the time, getting ready to graduate. And it was a terribly painful decision to make because I felt like I was letting myself down, letting my family down. But I just. I just knew I wasn't going to follow that path. It just was not. It was not working for me.
- [08:30]
B
Despite everybody in your family having this kind of education, what is the little voice inside of you that gives you the courage to say, maybe this is the right path for me?
- [08:43]
A
I watched my dad take an early retirement. I watched him burn his suits in the alleyway of taking a retirement and saying, I'm never gonna do this again. I'm never gonna be that guy ever again. And I just thought that was profoundly sad to see somebody who really just wanted to live by the beach and surface and play golf and ride his bike and be outdoorsy and do all of that. I watched him put on a mask every single day of his life for the cost of doing business. And I just thought, man, you know, that's just. Again, it's just profoundly sad. What's the point of going and doing all of this if you get out four years later or six years later, as it were, and then you're strapped with all this debt? At least if I was going to go try my hand at some things, I had the financial freedom to do that. And whether that was living in a city that was expensive, which was a burden for me, but I didn't have the debt. So it was like I had the expense, but I didn't have the pressure of the debt. And to this day, I still feel like when you make decisions based on opportunity instead of making decisions based on obligation, you will. You can't go wrong.
- [10:16]
B
I think the way that we have our society set up is at 18, you're supposed to figure out what you're going to do with the rest of your life, right? What your talents and gifts are, what gives you joy. And we're asking pretty much kids to make these decisions. At some point in your life, you have to take on responsibilities and possibly do the things you don't like. Hopefully you can design a life that's filled with joy and rewards you handsomely for doing that. What I'm hearing from you is f. Dogma. I don't care how it was done for a thousand years. This is your moment. And the only moment we have is today and this time to make the most of our lives. And if school is not for you, don't feel like you've got to be squeezed into something that doesn't fit you. But at some point, you're gonna have to find something to do that you're good at.
- [11:00]
A
You still have to educate yourself. And that's the. That's the thing is, like, it's harder to not have a path to follow. But, like, for my kids, as an example, am I saving for their college? Yes. Because I'm hoping that they. They are like, you know, oh, this is what I wanna do. And this is. It's. It's better, you know, as a parent to see that There's a clear path for your child to be happy is like an amazing thing. And I also, like I said, I feel like it's training wheels for life. You need to learn things besides curriculum. You need to learn how to make new groups of friends. You need to learn how to get to places on time. You need to learn how to take care of yourself and how you eat and when you find time to exercise and, you know, how you study and show up for exams and all of that. Those are all things that we have to do in the workplace. So for that there's value. But like I said, if you spend the majority of your day learning about something that you don't care about.
- [12:06]
B
Yeah. There are young people who, who I've employed that have this kind of mindset where I. I wish there were a different word for me to use, but feel quite entitled to what they have. And they say, well, the burden of the business is to take care of them, not for them to take care of the business. And they become extremely difficult to work with. And they're always like, well, pay me more and I'll do that. I said, well, I'll show you the door because this is not how I work. And so some part of this, I feel like we have to develop a certain amount of grit to be able to do things that we might not like to get to do the things that we want. And over time, at least this is my mindset, we get to do exactly what we want. Do you want to speak to that?
- [12:51]
A
I have an office that's split almost half between Millennial and Gen Z. I'm the only Xer. I love my office and I love the different perspectives. And I think there's a bad rap on kind of the, you know, the Gen Zers saying, like, well, this isn't what I get paid to do. And I do have other priorities in my life besides work. Whereas our mentality was you have to be the hardest working person. You don't necessarily have to be the most talented person. You just have to be there, the person that's there the longest, you know, the earliest, the last person to leave all of that. So I've had to kind of change my mentality. But I also think that by example and love, I have also maybe changed their mentality. I don't want to pass on that you have to be miserable and be belittled and, you know, sort of beaten down to submission in order to prove your loyalty to it to a company.
- [14:05]
B
Well, let's, let's move into the business at hand here, what do you do at Guerrilla Marketing?
- [14:10]
A
So I'm the CEO and founder and we handle everything, soup to nuts on what a brand or a. An artist needs online. So it's the. It's the nuts and bolts of the owned properties, it's websites, it's email lists, it's merchandising, it's things like that. But most people know us because we manage social media, which has become obviously more complicated and more robust over the years, which you're very aware of. But it is an amazing time to be in this business, especially creatively. But we handle not just the creative, we also handle the economics. And so it's building digital economies. We work with a lot of artists, we work with comedians, we work with brands and nonprofits, and we also work with local business people. I mean, I truly work with interesting people that have good stories, that are good human beings first and foremost and are fun to work with. And I just refuse to work with anybody who doesn't check all those boxes.
- [15:35]
B
Let's expand on this. In terms of the economics of it, that's something I haven't heard before from a digital marketing agency. What does that mean?
- [15:45]
A
The thing is that it's everything. How you are set up to succeed online is an extension of how you're set up to succeed offline. What is your proposition for people? You know, like, why do people want to follow you? What products do you offer, or what shows are you part of? Are you a musician? Are you a touring band? Are you a painter? Are you an author? Are you a digital creator? Are you a charity? They all have the same issues, every single one of them across the board. They have profiles to manage, they have content to ideate, create, and edit, which, as you know, more than anybody probably that I've talked to in the last month. Editing is a thing very timely process. And then you have merchandise and you have concert tickets or you have things to sell. And what's the balance of personality versus selling something? And how do you create community? Like, these are not buzzwords. These are actual strategies that we have to help and maintain. And so each new idea brings, you know, the whole ecosystem with it. And so there's direct sales, obviously, there's indirect sales in terms of, like, how do you amass a certain audience that when it's time, you can galvanize in a certain area? And then there are nuts and bolts now of how do we monetize the content directly on these platforms and what's fair and what rights do we have and you know, that's a pretty complicated system and it just keeps getting more complicated. So. And with AI and you know, everything coming down the road for us, like we're just trying to stay on top of what we can stay on top of in terms of opportunities. And it's fascinating and it's frustrating and it's overwhelming and it's also, I, I've never been more excited about digital media than I am right now because there's so many opportunities, but it is, it's a lot. So somebody kind of has to be the, the quarterback of the, of the team and that's, that's me.
- [18:28]
B
It sounds like a bit of what you're doing is business management. Is that, are you getting into business management?
- [18:33]
A
I mean, I sure hope not because I am the, the last person that anyone needs to be, be doing math with. But I, I certainly want to find places and identify where we can be monetizing or you know, leveraging relationships and making sure that the people that are in charge of, of the money things are aware.
- [18:57]
B
Okay, so then you're probably working pretty closely with the artists and their business manager.
- [19:04]
A
Yeah. And to connect those things.
- [19:06]
B
Illegal. Okay.
- [19:07]
A
A lot of legal, which I never thought I would say. And you know, 20 years. The. I've just been raging against lawyers my whole life. I mean as you say, business development, when you're building somebody's digital economy, then you are responsible for that. And like anybody in life who runs a business, taxes and legal is just part of it.
- [19:31]
B
Most of our audience are not going to identify as an artist, comedian, some kind of celebrity or running a nonprofit. They're going to be small to medium sized businesses, most likely doing a professional service. Can you share with us your top three things that you need to be doing in 2025 as a digital. In the, in the digital social space, something that's really practical that they could apply.
- [19:55]
A
I mean there's a difference in followers, but it's, it's still the same. The, your, your biggest hurdles are your biggest opportunities. So do you have your owned properties on lockdown? Is your website and your email list and, and, or you know, if you have a text database. Like these are important for a plethora of reasons. Like look at the pandemonium that we all went through when TikTok was down for a day. What business do you have really if you don't own the relationship with your customer, period. So don't delay making sure that you have your website and your email list and maybe consider a text list. But Just something that you have direct communication with. And the biggest hurdle that I see is that people feel sad that they don't have as many people on their owned properties as they might on a third party, like a social network. So I constantly have to remind people, Whether you have 10 followers or you have 10 million followers, there is no conversion rate that you should feel successful at between amassing an audience on a social network and trying to make sure that you have direct contact with them. That all the third party social networks are a big wide net, but you don't own that relationship. And so the drill and the trick is to say to yourself, what would happen if Instagram shut down tomorrow? And most people panic as soon as I say that. And so we try to say that frequently because it could happen. We've seen it happen. And also, these networks are cyclical. They're generational. The second thing is. And everybody talks about numbers, but here's the trick. There is no trick. You need to decide what's right for you as a business in terms of how often you can create consistently. So start small and say to yourself, I'm going to do one video and two photos a week. That's it. And then you need to interact with people on other pages and be active. You just need to be who you are. That's the biggest thing. And the third trick I would just say is that you don't have to be everywhere at once, but you do need to be active. Because if you have the desire to grow your business, then you have the desire to maintain relationships with the people that you already have and have new people come into your world. The only way to do that is to meet them where you are. I see a lot of resistance still to people who might have some. Some comfortableness in one particular area, but then they dismiss. Like, for instance, they maybe built a pretty good following on Facebook and they don't see the value in trying to rebuild something on TikTok or, you know, something like that, because they don't get the kind of reaction that they do on Facebook. Well, that's just silly. I mean, it's like, well, it's a different generation and, and it's a different audience and you have to create different. So those are my. Those are my three things. But people overcomplicate it. You can't overcomplicate it. You just have to be consistent.
- [23:44]
B
Do you manage the accounts and are acting on behalf of your clients?
- [23:48]
A
I mean, technically, it's collaborative effort. I mean, we certainly don't pretend to be Anybody online or. We certainly don't deploy anything without our clients giving us directives. Like that's. It's just not possible. We used to be able to do that a little bit more back in the day, but now it's. Most of the content is first person and video content, so it's really hard. You know, it's like you can't really fake that stuff. It's more so teaching and coaching and collaborating with our clients to make sure that they're doing everything in the right way.
- [24:27]
B
Maybe I'm doing this all wrong myself because when I discover that certain people I follow actually don't do any of their own social content, they batch record, they give it to an agency, an agency posts and comments and responds for them. And I'm just shocked because I literally post everything myself, respond to all the comments in the DMS myself. So there must be a hybrid, maybe.
- [24:53]
A
Yes. And here's what I'm going to tell you, okay? Responding to DMs constantly is a waste because you're answering the same questions over and over and over again, right? So I will just give you that tip right there that if it's so much better, if you're going to spend your time engaging with people, please engage with them on the actual posts so that people can see. I mean, responding to somebody on a DM is perfectly fine, but saying it as a badge of courage, like I answer every dm, don't say that because then people are gonna DM you, you know, but answer those questions publicly so that other people can read them and reference them later on in older posts. It's just such a more strategic way to go about it. Batch recording and editing. I have a double, I have a, I have a conflicting relationship with batch recording. I don't have an issue with necessarily for some people who have limited resources and time or are pulled in a thousand directions. And we know that we have a certain threshold that we're looking to have content wise, but not being involved in what you want to say about that content or not engaging, for me, it's, it's a, it's a. No brands are different because they're not human beings. I work with human beings. And even for nonprofits, those non profits have founders and those nonprofits have employees, and those nonprofits have success, have success stories, hopefully of people's lives that have been changed. So you have storytelling and you have, you have an endless amount of material to help promote that isn't necessarily batched recording. You know, like, you just have to Dig deeper than that. And I know it's hard when you're doing everything yourself and you're doing your booking and you're doing the recording, and then you're doing the editing, and then you have to promote yourself and all of that. That's hard. So that's what I'm saying. Like, for me, it's not that my clients aren't capable of doing all of these things, because they are. There's just not enough time. And as these platforms have become more complicated and more robust, and now we're cutting all this video, and one day we wake up and it was vertical video, and now they need something square in different dimensions, and then you have to resize everything. Like, I love the. I love the idea that we have the resources in this office to be able to just say, hey, I did this for you. You know, like, already took care of that. Because the more I can free up my client to think creatively and to be more thoughtful about how they connect with people, the better they're going to be. But the idea that you have to, like, chase an algorithm all day long and be so involved in the analytics, that's. That's not conducive to the creative process.
- [28:18]
B
Can you share how you might possibly work with a reluctant creator? Whether they're an artist, a comedian, or a small business owner or nonprofit where they make stuff and you feel like you're kind of holding back. I'm not feeling the real you in this. How do you help them through that? Because there's a lot of people I know who seem to be holding back all the time.
- [28:40]
A
Most human beings that feel deeply or passionate about what they do, putting themselves out here like this, doing this work is awful. They feel like they have to. And so that's the first hurdle is that we have to say to them, yeah, I mean, this is where the world is, and this is where, you know, the opportunities are. So we have to reframe the motivation to want to do those things, and then it's our job to figure out what do they like about it. And so, you know, I mean, it's. It's a challenge because there's no. I can't give you a template. I can't say to you, like, hey, here's. Here's what you. Here's what you need to do. Chris. This works for everybody else. Like, it's literally different for every single person. And in different seasons for the same person, sometimes you're, like, super motivated. Then other times you go in and you read the comments. And there's full of the worst things that you could possibly read about yourself. And it beats everybody down, beats us down. And we have, like, thick skin and we have to read. We read what all these human beings say to each other all the time, which was the whole point of the book, right? Like, to start talking to people like they're not to. To remember that people are human beings behind these screens and that it's not okay to just, like, blindly go on somebody's page and blast them for how they look or what they said or what mistake they made, you know? But it is important that every day, if you want to say something, you want to communicate, to realize, like, what a blessing that really is, because I remember when that wasn't the case. And you. In order for you to put out an advertisement, you'd have to have a million dollars. How do you get your product out? Let's say you invented a mop. How do you get your product out without putting it on television? And who could afford television back then? Not very many people. So the idea that we can create something and create content and sell or connect with people or share that somebody's in a bad space and needs donation or whatever those are, it is. It is so prolific and it is so important to us as human beings that I just, you know, we just have to keep reminding people of it.
- [31:27]
B
You're. You're spot on with so much of that. And it's. It's kind of how most people are in terms of, like, we're afraid of really showing up as ourselves, because if you put up a Persona of yourself, it's easy for someone to critique that saying, yeah, I know. It's all right. It's not really me. But to be really vulnerable and to show up 100% as yourself is opening yourself up to both the good and then, fortunately, the bad. And to be resilient through all that stuff, it's tough. But I just find that personally, when people are willing to take that risk, the reward is worth it. But that's just me.
- [32:06]
A
Well, you don't have anything to lose, and you won't have anything to regret if you're fully yourself. Like, we do things, we say things, maybe, you know, but, like, at the end of the day, it's. That's kind of what we're here for, right? But I will say this also. It's okay to take a break. Like, it's okay if you're not feeling. Going in and talking to people that day. You know, you're Gonna not answer as many DMs, but you're gonna, you know, you decide, you're gonna go answer a bunch of Facebook comments or, you know, whatever. Whatever it is that you feel comfortable doing and you're in a bad mood, don't do it. It's okay. Like, guess what? If you just go to sleep, get a good meal, take a walk, do all of those things that maybe you do that tomorrow, and maybe that's a different thing. Like, we all have to shut it down, but you don't have to give it up.
- [33:09]
B
I have a light question, and I have a heavy question.
- [33:11]
A
Okay, I'm ready.
- [33:12]
B
Do we go light first or heavy?
- [33:13]
A
Let's go, let's go, let's go heavy. Let's go.
- [33:16]
B
Okay. You talk about in the book, about losing your father and dealing with breast cancer. What. What did. What did you learn from that experience?
- [33:24]
A
Well, you know how you asked me or I. We had talked about earlier where I said, why. Why me?
- [33:30]
B
Yeah.
- [33:30]
A
And so I remember I. I got. I was getting a mammogram, and I was sitting in, you know, sitting in the doctor's office, and they have all those, like, posters everywhere, and it was like one in eight. And I'm, you know, looking around me and I'm seeing how many people are there in that day. And like I said, I'm not great at math, but I. I can understand a. A bad average. A bad average for me for that day. And I'm looking at all these women, and, you know, there's some of us that are, like, in our 40s, and, you know, maybe we have young kids or, you know, then there's younger women, then there's older women. There's people on their phones. There's people that are just reading like it's nothing. You know, just reading a book, like, chatting away, you know, just doing all of that. And I was like, yeah, like everybody. This affects everybody. And I just was kind of overwhelmed in that moment. Not that I had no. First of all, I thought there's no way I would stop. It wasn't going to be me, you know, But I was overwhelmed with thinking somebody here, at least three people, are probably going to get the call today that this test is coming back. Like, that's terrible, terrible imagery to have while you're waiting to get a mammogram. But I walked out of there and I remembered as my father had pass from pancreatic cancer, which is. There's a zero survival rate on that. On that cancer. And there's a high Probability of, of survival for breast cancer, especially with early detection. And I just walked out of, of that hospital thinking how even though my life up until that point had been anything but average, I walked out of the hospital thinking how average I am. Like, how part of, like, just, you know, there's no, there's no vip, there's no backstage, there's no quick, fast pass. There's none of that when you're sitting in a hospital waiting room, you know, and my dad, after all the things that I told you about him taking an early retirement, kind of throwing his middle finger to the man and going to live a beach bum life after all of that, and then going through retirement and, and then he dies at 67. And I was like, well, that's not for me either. You know, like there ha. Like you said, there has to be like some middle ground here. You know, like, how do you. How do you create the kind of life that you don't feel that you need to rebel against later and go so far, you know, in the opposite direction, that you are like, reclaiming something that your perception is that you lost. So instead, how do you just know that you could change and your priorities might evolve and you might get more responsibilities like spouses and children and all of that. But, like, how do I do this with some level of authenticity that makes me feel like I am living the life that today on a. Today is a Thursday, It's April right now. And how do I feel that if, God forbid, today is my last day on Earth, how do I feel? Pretty okay about it. And so I, I didn't. I don't give thanks for having cancer. I don't. I'm not one of those people like, oh, it changed my life. I did. Blah, blah, blah. I was like, literally, I'm the, the cancer person. I don't want anybody to have it, okay? I don't want anyone to have it. I don't want anyone to go through it. I want it to be eradicated off the planet Earth. But I did get the unwavering philosophy that I have not gone back on for one, one day. And that is that I do not have bad days. I have bad moments. I. I'm a very high energy, high tempered, you know, also big lover. Like, I mean, I'm all, all the big things, but. So I do have bad days. I do get angry, I do get frustrated. I also have two children, so you know how that goes. But I do not have bad days. I do not waste a whole day.
- [38:43]
B
Feeling that ever is that because you're grateful to be alive.
- [38:49]
A
Yeah, because it's. And it's even, like, it's not even that dramatic. It was like. It's just. You see, you're so much more in tune with people, and maybe this would have just come with age, you know, but, like, everybody is battling something, and everybody had a hard time with something today. And so I just want to be like, okay, I had. I had a hard time with something, or you had, you know, a bad day, but, like, tomorrow we're gonna show up, and we're gonna show up together, and we're gonna. And we're gonna figure this out.
- [39:29]
B
I'd love to get your response to this. Does losing something gain you a perspective?
- [39:36]
A
Probably. And I think, like, just understanding how fragile all of this is and how fleeting all of our moments are, that at the end of the day, if we feel like we did something that mattered every day, what else is there?
- [39:58]
B
I think there's this. I don't know the exact quote on this, but it's something about making your days count, because we don't know how many of them we have. So make every day count, just so I don't leave our audience hanging. Are you cancer free?
- [40:11]
A
I'm doing great. I'm five years out. It's a continuation because there's hormonal issues for women, and so I'm on a drug called Tamoxifen, so I'm always, like, very careful to tell people that. And. But so far, so good. And I. I am. I do everything I can for breast cancer research. And so, you know, if anybody else has, you know, tips or tricks or other things that they find about breast cancer, like, great resources or whatever, please find me on Instagram and. And send it to me, because I. I really do love to read all of those survivor stories and. Helps me. I mean, that's another thing about digital media, is that during the diagnosis period, which was a. A. A depressing and bewildering moment for me, a lot of the Internet information you don't want to read. You know, it's like the medical information and a lot of misinformation. But what wasn't misinformed were people that shared their stories online and especially stories of survivorship. And they were lifelines to me.
- [41:36]
B
If you were to pass away unexpectedly tomorrow, how would you feel about the life you've lived?
- [41:43]
A
I would. My biggest regret or my biggest emotional response to the question, like, that has just to do with my children just wanting to be here as long as possible to watch them grow. But I set out to do some things when my dad died, and I made them very clear, and I've been able to expand on them. And aside from the fact of, like, wanting to see more places and travel more and. And be with my kids, that's it. I. Everything else, I. I feel like it's just, like, awesome bonus time, but I would like to live to be like, a hundred.
- [42:27]
B
But you'd be at peace because you're pursuing the things that make you or that give you joy, right?
- [42:32]
A
Yes.
- [42:32]
B
Yeah. Okay. I can't help but to ask this question, because if you're listening to the podcast, you won't know this, but if you're watching this somewhere on YouTube or the Internet, there's a skateboard behind you. Tell me about the skateboard.
- [42:45]
A
So that is. My. My friend's daughter made that for me. I can't move. I want to show it to you. But she painted the deck by hand for me. And so it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. And so I had to hang it up on the wall. But it's a. It's a. It's a homage to my. To my love for California. Being in Nashville, it's. You know, I. I still. I'm not a skateboarder at all. I just want to say that I just wear. I just wear the clothes. So I'm a poser. I'm an absolute poser. But it is. It is my. It is my homage to the. The Golden State.
- [43:27]
B
You love California youth culture.
- [43:29]
A
I always loved it. I mean, I was born and raised in Colorado, so I feel like we were adjacent. In my mind, there's a picture of youth and it was the 1980s. Kids in vans, slip ons, and beachy hair. And, you know, I hear the soundtrack. Like, as soon as I. As soon as I see that image, I. I hear the music.
- [43:59]
B
My guest today has been Jenny Smythe. She's the author of Becoming Gorilla Jenny. Thank you very much for spending your time with me today.
- [44:07]
A
Thank you for spending your time with me.
- [44:09]
B
For people who want to find out more about you and what you do, where should we send them?
- [44:13]
A
I think probably to gorillamarketing.com is probably the best place. Um, and there's a. There's like, on the. On the top, there's a tab that's for Becoming Guerrilla. And it has like, my. I do a little blog and try to do, like, industry tips and tricks and digital media, things like that. That's probably the best place. But you can always send them to my Instagram, too.
- [44:34]
B
What's Instagram?
- [44:35]
A
It's Gorilla Jenny.
- [44:37]
B
It's girl, like G I R L and then it's Illa I L L. A gorilla.
- [44:42]
A
Yeah.
- [44:42]
B
Yeah. Just so you guys know, because they'll be.
- [44:45]
A
You'll get it eventually.
- [44:46]
B
Yeah, the Internet is smart like that. It'll figure it out for you. Yeah, okay, wonderful.