Lead Generation Journey
Based on an episode with Glenville Dixon Jr 🇦🇬🇯🇲🇩🇲
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
We talked with Glenville Dixon Jr (he/him), a digital marketer and business lead gen strategist with over five years of local and international experience in the UK, the US, and his home country. Glenville is passionated about creating immersive and engaging visual stories that communicate the needs of his partners in an entertaining and unique way.
In this episode, Glenville discussed his various experiences in digital marketing specially led gen. You’ll gain insights on how to learn new skills and collaborate with other creative professionals.
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How do you feel connected with the caribbean community
Honestly, truth be told, how do I communicate this in a super effective way? I feel like the way that I’m able to connect with my Caribbean roots and ancestries is by understanding the differences between different people and cultures.
The country I live in currently is called Antigua and Barbuda. And what people will tell you, hopefully, no other Antiguan sees this, but you would consider this country to be something like a melting pot of different cultures and different people, different experiences that all come together. But the one thing that is pretty much aligned across the board is that all of us are black. All of us have African American descent, and all of us came from nearby Caribbean regions to settle in Antigua and Barbuda to make a better life for ourselves.
So my connection with Caribbean and other people is just the fact that, in my home country, and also to an extent, through the Internet, I’m able to connect with Guyanese people, I’m able to connect with Haitians, I’m able to connect with Jamaicans, Dominicans.
By the way, I’m half Jamaican, half Dominican myself as well. It’s a really village-like way of living. Everyone knows everyone. We’re all interconnected. We all saw each other grow and go through different experiences at our best, at our worst, and saw our abilities to evolve and encourage others to evolve as well. So I feel like I’m involved as I’m continuing along with my own unique take on life and the way that I go about business.
What inspired you to pursue a career in digital marketing and become a business lead generation strategist
Five years ago, I was just a freelancer. I did graphic design and web design to assist with paying bills and things that were national. I always had an incredible thirst for knowledge. Even today, my entire YouTube feed is just educational content back and forth. Now it’s more business-oriented and finance-oriented. But in the past, it used to be about science, used to be about engineering, used to be about things from thermodynamics to how gravity really works.
I was always enamored with the way the world worked, how people worked. I also did a lot of psychological shows. I read lots of psychology books and things of that nature. I was always in love with learning. And when I was in my last year of high school, basically, so I was doing a couple of things. I was working two part-time jobs at my local intellectual property office, learning about trademarks and copyrights and registering businesses. There I realized this business stuff, this is very interesting. So that’s when I went online and I pirated my first business textbook and read it cover to cover. I worked in construction as well, part-time, and I was also a part of a youth show called ufology.
I started as a guest. I heard them on the radio. I was just like, I need to be on this part. I need to be on this. So I joined them as a guest, and I think it only took three months. I ended up being one of the best hosts for the show and also learned the tech side and backend and so on and so forth. I also joined a business development group that was connected with ufology, and I learned a lot of super interesting things. I met this one individual. I’m going to rep you now, Yobani. His name is Yobani Danvers. And he was the technician with me over in ufology.
What I did was, he did this thing every time. He had an amazing show. And all of our shows are available online, if you Google it, but please don’t Google it. I was very young. Leave young Glenn alone. I saw him witness him every single time he had a good show. He would say, you know, we need to do it. We need to do this ourselves. We need to do this for ourselves, right? I was like, okay, Barney, sure, he did this ten times in a row, right? Ten times in a row. The 10th time, we had literally the best show ever. I invited some of my school friends, and we just covered the entire podcast. We were doing amazingly. I was hosting mini workshops, like, okay, how can we do this? How can we do that? We were so good, we didn’t even need to look at the scripts anymore, right? Because we would literally talk about ufology topics and discussions within our friend group.
So we jumped onto a thing and we’re looking at the topic, we’re like, okay, bam. We already know how we go and do this, right? So we had the best show ever. It was so good. It was so good that we had a producer, and every time the show would end, we would always give feedback, like, okay, we can do this better. We can do that better. Glenville, you talk a bit too much. Let other people talk now. Oh, God. Love a chat. Okay, understood. Yobani, remember with the technician stuff. Okay, Joshua, you need to make sure this time this is what happened.
Let me lay out the scene for you. We’re on the top floor doing the show. The show ended. We all took off our headphones, and, the fiend music came in, which was radioactive from, I think, imagine dragons. “Welcome to the new age. To the new age.” So we got up and we’re walking out happily now. Like, yo, that had to be the best show ever. It’s Austin and five other panelists, right? We go downstairs, we go into the third door on the right, which opens up into a big lunchroom, dear.
We had our lovely sponsors and their food just waiting for us on the table. We came in, we sat down, the producer came in behind us as well and sat down, took his napkin, put the napkin in, made it look real nice, prepared his fork, and he started to eat. He paused for a second. We haven’t started eating. I know. He paused for a second, looked up at us and said, good job, guys, that was a really good show. And then he continued, eating. And we were, what? What? Impossible. No criticism, nothing. Just, it was on a high that night. And we left that office half an hour later, happy.
We left that office and Yobani said it again. We can do this ourselves. Let’s do this ourselves now. We can get our own sponsors, build our own brand, build this, build that, do it ourselves. I looked at Yobani, I stopped everyone at Yobani, that’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go, I’m going to figure out how we’re going to do it, and that’s what we’re going to do, right? Because it was angelic, I loved it.
I went to him that night, and I spent most of it. I counted it because I told him, after I spent 6 hours researching how to go about doing a podcast, I looked into all the podcasts that currently exist. I looked into the revenue potential, looked into the potential for ads, scalability, listenership, downloadership, viewership. I looked at the entire thing. And also, demographics. Like where are we in the region? How quickly is it, like if I started a podcast in the Caribbean for it to grow with a black audience? Not many people watch and listen to podcasts, so that was a thing to consider. And the conclusion I came to was, yeah, boy, we can’t do this. Not yet anyways. We can’t do this yet. It takes time. We would have to raise money to do our own advertisements and outreach, and we’d have to do a lot of consistent content over time.
While we could do that, it’s very hard to build an audience to be self-sustained as it existed. I was like, okay, what do I need to build in order to have the resources to support this podcast? And I started looking at business models, right? I’d seen dozens of business models and I’d read many business development books beforehand, so I kind of knew where to look. I was good at being a freelancer, so I’m good at copywriting. I can do graphic design here and there. And how to find clients, that’s an important thing. I wasn’t just using Upwork and Freelancer at the time, by the way. I was, and I just created a Fiverr account. I was like, okay, I can find clients. I can have conversations. I can convince them to trust this guy who was like, I don’t even know how old I was, 17 at the time, to take a chance on him and to develop this work really well and things of that nature. I decided I was like, okay, I can do this. I got to figure out what to do to make this happen, but I can do this.
I went and I had a conversation with Yobani. I’m like, okay, so we can’t do the podcast yet. We’ll do some episodes, but we’ll just keep that on the back burner. What we really need more than anything else is to be financially stable, which means to have something that we can call our own, that we can scale beyond regular jobs. Solution: an agency. That was the birth of my first business. My first business was an agency, which is the whole reason I called it. What it was at the time, which is called TZF, or technologically zealous family, is I wanted to bring other individuals that were just like me into the business and give them a share of the company to bring in business and do exceptional work and have all of these wild dreams and aspirations.
We spent six months basically learning every single path, what it takes to run an agency, from operations to law to finance. I did almost 24 courses in total to properly educate myself of everything that I needed to do. I worked on sales and getting clients while Yobani worked on content creation, marketing, graphic design, and things of that nature. And he just bounced our skill set off each other. And that right there was the foundation of TZF. That’s how the business came to be.
If you could, highlight maybe two things from this journey in digital marketing, what would you say were the main highlights?
I’m going to say that the journey was incredibly difficult, hard, painstaking, and required a lot. When we started, I saw it as the easiest business to start with no money, but it demanded us to learn a vast amount of information and communicate effectively, both locally and internationally.
I aimed to do it only six times. I examined local colleges, universities, and their four-year degrees in business administration, finance, and law. I found equivalent resources online, completed those courses, and absorbed the information to build a comprehensive business management curriculum.
My first highlight is becoming competent in diverse skills. I believe 80% of people can learn 80% of the skills in the world, but being exceptional is needed for the remaining 20%. To be an agency owner, a year of intensive training is essential, with initial clients often being free to build strategic partnerships.
My second highlight is as a design strategist, bringing together skills to connect businesses with their target customers, fostering a greater impact. Recently, I learned that providing tenfold value results in one-fold return. Focusing on maximum profit rather than customer value leads to dissatisfaction and failure.
In life and business, it’s crucial to focus on providing value, fostering connections, and choosing the right people. Being selfless in a way that benefits oneself ultimately leads to success. People skills are paramount, and understanding that all exchanges involve people is a key realization in my journey.
What are the most common misconceptions about lead gen that you often encounter and how do you address them? Or maybe we can step back and give people an overview about what lead generation is?
Lead generation is essentially the process of acquiring potential customers interested in your product or service. These are individuals likely to benefit from what you offer and reciprocate with value exchange. However, a common false expectation is the belief in magical, instantaneous results through methods like Google Ads.
Different businesses have diverse lead generation methods, each with its own time frame. The misconception lies in expecting instant success without recognizing the need for consistent effort and connection with the target audience. Lead generation is not merely about collecting email addresses or social media connections; it’s about connecting with people on a mass scale and helping them identify with your product or service.
Consistency is key, and the responsibility of a CEO is to envision, lead, generate leads, and enhance the product. The misconception often leads to businesses lacking consistent lead generation. For a CEO, effective communication and continuous lead generation are crucial, ensuring alignment with the ideal audience and steady business growth.
Connecting with people genuinely and streamlining the process of reaching the target audience is vital. Marketers or agencies often refer to this as streamlining the ability to connect with target audiences. Creating a detailed buyer persona helps in optimizing marketing strategies, such as targeted ads on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
In essence, lead generation is an ongoing process that requires understanding, connecting, and consistently reaching out to the right audience for sustained business growth.
Which advice would you give to someone who wants to enter digital marketing, especially in the led gen space?
The essence of marketing and sales lies in finding something in your everyday life that you value and attempting to sell it to others. This process involves understanding your product or service deeply and convincing others of its worth. The journey starts with your friends, trying to sell them on something you are passionate about. If they aren’t interested, the focus shifts to understanding why and figuring out how to reach the right audience through social media and targeted content creation.
There’s a clear distinction between a marketer and a salesman. Marketers seek to understand individuals and inform them about products, while salesmen aim to make a sale. This fine line is crucial, and the two roles should ideally work in harmony. The negative perception of salespeople often stems from those using deceptive tactics due to a lack of belief in their products or disregard for customers. Authenticity in passion can make the difference, making a salesperson more like a marketer who genuinely connects with customers.
Passion plays a vital role in marketing. If you genuinely care about a product or service, your enthusiasm and knowledge contribute to effective marketing. Identifying what people are interested in and suggesting related products or services is a fundamental marketing skill. We engage in marketing and selling activities daily in our lives, understanding people, aligning ourselves, and progressing through life.
In the professional realm, the primary difference is that the exchange facilitated by marketers and salespeople involves the exchange of money. The concept of influencers is highlighted, emphasizing the importance of engaging specific niche audiences over broader ones. Businesses should aim to find the right audience willing to pay for the value they offer.
The ultimate goal is to identify people whose expectation is to find immense value in your product or service, making the exchange of money a natural and justified process. As a business grows, there might be a need to let go of certain clients who no longer align with the business’s growth trajectory. The focus should always be on identifying and connecting with the right target clients.
Which resources helped you in your journey?
So the unfortunate thing is I’m incredibly bad with names. Anything, data, or details or information. I remember it perfectly, like no one’s business, but I cannot remember the names of different things, which is really unfortunate because there are, ah, quite a bit of books that I’ve read that have provided some insight.
You should already have an inclination in understanding people, trying to help people and facilitate an exchange, as well as a level of creativity, being able to create things and then communicate your creative works with others. And also, you have to be really okay with failing once you have those prerequisites, as well as a love of learning new things, just like I did.
I’m actually kind of against giving specific things you can read up on, even if I remember the names, because just the act of discovering and researching on your own is an incredible journey. I understand the reason that we go to school and we go to college, and education is a streamlined way to learn something that gives you a skill set that makes you valuable in a job and in the world.
If you plan to use this skill as an entrepreneur or to sell your own product and service, the first thing you need to understand right now is that there is no limit to what you can learn and what you can absorb. You just have to go out there and find it. There’s nothing stopping you except your own perception.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
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Additional Reading Mentioned in the Interview
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