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The Power of Partnerships: Bruno Gralpois on Building Billion-Dollar Relationships

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Bruno Gralpois captivates with an inspiring journey from barely speaking English as a French immigrant to becoming a marketing powerhouse managing billion-dollar budgets for Microsoft and co-founding Agency Mania Solutions. His remarkable story weaves through Seattle's tech boom, experiencing IPOs, acquisitions, and eventually receiving Steve Ballmer's marketing excellence award at Microsoft.

The conversation reveals fascinating insights about the global marketing landscape, including the milestone that advertising spending surpassed $1 trillion in 2024. Bruno breaks down how major corporations allocate marketing budgets—typically 12% of revenue—dividing funds between media placement (60%), production (20%), and agency fees (20%). This expertise comes from years of working with Fortune 500 brands like Nestlé, American Express, and Toyota.

Bruno shares thought-provoking perspectives on artificial intelligence in marketing, noting the tension between agencies eagerly adopting AI tools and more regulated client industries approaching them cautiously. His balanced view highlights AI's transformative potential for production costs while acknowledging the complex governance issues surrounding its implementation.

The most compelling moments come when Bruno discusses his book "Success Freak: Kick Ass in Seven Days," challenging conventional definitions of success. Rather than focusing solely on wealth, fame, and power, he advocates for developing a personal definition as the essential first step toward fulfillment. This philosophy, combined with his emphasis on choosing willingness over aptitude when hiring, offers listeners actionable wisdom relevant to both entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.

Ready to redefine your own success? Listen now and discover how Bruno's unique blend of European perspective, American entrepreneurship, and global marketing expertise can transform your approach to business and life.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Vegas Circle Podcast with your hosts, paki and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success and culture and this is our platform to showcase to people in our city who make it happen. And on today's podcast we've got a really special guest. We've been trying to set this up for many years now, man, so we've actually got a friend in the circle with us who's a powerhouse in the marketing industry. He's worked with businesses like Microsoft, visa. Now he's built out his own company. Originally from Paris, so we're going to get into that, but he's actually the co-founder of Agency Mania Solutions. We got Mr Bruno Grospois. I got to say it the right way, did.

Speaker 2:

I say it the right way you did, you did.

Speaker 3:

Perfect man Got to get you a proper introduction 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1:

Chris is going to give me a negative 10.

Speaker 3:

I know that's funny, I don't know. He obviously knows the name better than I do, but I thought you missed the mark there.

Speaker 1:

Oh here we go. But my man, bruno man, so it's an absolute pleasure to have you, man, so let's dive right in. So you've got a credible story. Where did you kind of get your first break, man? I know you've done a lot that we'll actually get into.

Speaker 2:

but where did your actual journey start, like? Where did so good to be here? It's been a few years since we talked about doing this so great to be here. So I started within tech. I started in probably what's considered the birthplace of cloud-based computing software, which is Seattle. So Mecca basically yeah, exactly, and that's where I started. Worked for a startup, did actually work for two startups there that ended up going through an IPO. Eventually, both of them got acquired by Microsoft.

Speaker 3:

Oh nice.

Speaker 2:

So I was kind of going through the crazy ride of software companies going IPO and eventually being acquired by the big guys. That's very exciting.

Speaker 1:

Everybody wishes for that. I know the big guys. That's very exciting.

Speaker 2:

Everybody wishes for that, I know, I know.

Speaker 1:

That's excellent. So you kind of started off working for different companies, kind of learning the whole space of the industry. I did, did they kind of like recruit you, did you get in, did you apply, like how did that all work?

Speaker 2:

The way? I started, being French, born and raised, you know. First, you know, went to college in France. Barely spoke English, still working on that, but moved to study in the Bay Area and get a postgraduate degree. That's where I really learned to speak the language. I had no choice. Found me to graduate and then fell in love, you know, with the country and fell in love with the space I was eventually going to spend my career in, which is marketing, advertising and brand building.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And then, just through acquaintances, I got an opportunity to meet people in the software business. They were like that's probably going to date me, aldo Spagemaker software engineers, people that started very early on and started a new company that ended up being called Visio not the one with a Z but the one with an S which was doing these float charting software which now you can find in Microsoft Office. So if you do any float charting, that's what they acquired for like $3.5 billion.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

And they ended up just building that in and so that was kind of the way I started and entry level. I got lucky enough to be part of a company that was growing fast, so that was kind of exciting and, as you know, when you're in the right place at the right time, things happen. And so I got to be able to do a lot more than I would have probably hoped for. And then I was kind of in that corporate environment, started jumping a little bit, went on the agency side, so the medicine avenue side of things, and then joined another company that was pre-IPO. I knew that about a year before the IPO called Equiniv. That was probably the strongest, largest IPO in the Northwest. At the time we had the strike price of $12. We're trading at $80 within like three weeks. It was crazy, very successful.

Speaker 2:

And then that was before the internet bubble bursted so a lot happened, but Microsoft bought them eventually for like $12 billion, which was a very decent acquisition. Microsoft has done bigger ones since then, but at the time that was the biggest one, I think.

Speaker 1:

And you won an award for Microsoft. I did Steve Ballmer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think he still owns the Lakers oh the Clippers?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the Clippers, sorry.

Speaker 2:

And he's been around tech for a long time. He started the company with Bill Gates and when Bill became chairman of the board, stepped away as CEO. Steve kind of stepped in and they were both, I think, harvard guide rates and Steve was kind of a crazy madman, if you will, in the company. But he did a lot of good things and I ended up working on a special project for them took a year of my life, it was kind of a global initiative and then I got the marketing excellence award from him. So that was that was really a big, a big celebration for me for a lot of the work I put into this company, which I where I stayed about 10 years and you know type A personality, you know just company, you know could, could afford to recruit the best of the best, you know.

Speaker 3:

So it was a very intense, very competitive environment, but yeah, as you're kind of going through that like IPO process, right, and everybody hopes for that. They see these companies, they'd like to be a part of that. Cause, to your point, there's a lot of benefits of being able to get on an IPO early, build the success with their. I'm sure most of the time when you're at early level stages you get some equity. You get some benefit from being able to be a part of that. When you're doing that, through the IPO transition process, what was the most exciting part for you? Was it the want to get acquired or was it really the growth of building that business from scratch or from a smaller space?

Speaker 2:

Most of the companies really, before they get acquired, don't really contemplate that. When they're on the IPO stage they're all about raising capital. Oh, raising capital so they don't actually need capital from other companies. So that question typically takes place years later. Initially they're really focused on building scale, getting investment in and really start growing the company. So there's a lot of excitement, I think.

Speaker 2:

For me, you know, it was really just the pure adrenaline rush that you felt every day going to the office and feel like you were changing the world and you got to be ridiculous. It's crazy and you know, and to your point, on paper, you know, sometime, depending on where you are like the second time around, I was an executive of the company. So that sounds great because I got a lot of shares and a lot of equity, if you will. But then the internet bubble again, bursted stocks starting depressing, and as an executive you're kind of tied up. You can't actually sell. That's an FTC rule, so the executive don't cash out and leave the company after it goes public and leave the investors. So there was a lot of so at that point that's where I went on the corporate side. That's where I joined Microsoft, not through the acquisition, but later on got hired by Microsoft.

Speaker 3:

Oh, so it wasn't part of the acquisition that you have to stay on for a certain number of years. No, and I was ready for stability at that point I was ready for stability.

Speaker 2:

At that point I was like, okay, I've done the crazy stuff, it's all good. You know, like I'm bruised a bit. You know I loved it, but now I'm like I want to go to a company that's stable, especially Microsoft. Yeah, there are about 90,000 employees, you know, billion in marketing, with about 5,000 marketers. At the time he was a big, big company and at the time I managed a budget that was probably near like a billion dollars. So it was a lot of money and doing a lot of cool stuff.

Speaker 2:

But it was through that project with Steve Ballmer I ended up working with a lot of basically on the global scale, building a capability. And then, as I was learning about this new role I was playing, I went and talked to all these amazing companies like the big names you know the Park and Gamble, the Unilever, the McDonald's, the Coca-Cola, the big brands wanted to find out how they did it and learned so much through that process that I realized nobody should go through what I went through to learn and build a team and build a function. So I decided to write my first book based on that. All these best practices I ended up putting in a book I'm like somebody at least will be able to read it and benefit from it, All the nuggets of what you've learned over the years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Excellent man. So then you ended up. So Agency Mania, when did you start that?

Speaker 2:

with your partners. We started about 12 years ago now, okay, so thank you yeah we're like bootstrap startup, and they were in that space too, right.

Speaker 2:

They were in the space. Yeah, one of them actually partnered with me. That's Terry and Sean. Right, yeah, terry was a good friend of mine, long-time friend. I did a lot of consulting for me in different companies I worked for, including Visa, where I worked for a while. So we knew each other very well and we always talked about doing something together.

Speaker 2:

And then sean was kind of a a new, uh, a new, um, a new entity for me.

Speaker 2:

Uh, extremely successful ceo of a mid-size 120 150 million dollar company called wrq got acquired by another company called.

Speaker 2:

So he had a lot of tech background and then it was very clear that, although people liked the book about best practices, the passion that we saw in the marketplace was actually to take these best practices and bring them to life using software, and CloudBase was exploding Again, the birthplace with Amazon AWS, microsoft Azure, cielo was the best place to do that and we started and our first client I actually introduced Terry to this company that wanted to hire me and I wasn't ready to jump from Visa, but I was in the Silicon Valley and the company was HP and HP Inc at the time before they split.

Speaker 2:

Now they're HPE Enterprise and HP Inc printer and laptop. They were one big entity and they offered me a job and I said no, but I know somebody who can help you. So I introduced Terry. Terry said hey, I'm not going to go there alone, I don't know any of these guys. Can you come with me? And it was a short ride from Visa to HP. So I went with her and then, after the meeting, they're like wow, we really like the two of the two of you and we're like interesting, we talked about doing something, so maybe that's it.

Speaker 2:

And so hp became our first client and that's how we started that's excellent, and now we have about 22 clients, the largest companies in the world, like company, like nestle, american express, toyota, you know, like big brands, big brands, like multi-billion dollar companies. So that's Klontz, so he's been a great journey.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, kind of like separate back a little bit, so you have a you know, for us, marketing to me is like I spend $50 on PPC campaigns right, that's me marketing, but obviously when you start $5 billion budget, $5 billion budget, it's a very different dynamic.

Speaker 3:

What is kind of the biggest nuance that you see from managing a marketing budget for some of these larger companies versus, like a small business? Because really when you're hiring an agency at a large company like that, you're getting a much different level of value than what you would be as hiring a PPC manager or social media manager online.

Speaker 2:

That's very different. Well, there's two things that come to mind scalability and sophistication, because we're a small business, too, servicing these amazing companies, but those companies. To give you a sense of scale, in 2024, for the first time, the advertising industry surpassed a trillion dollars.

Speaker 3:

Oh wow.

Speaker 1:

It just passed in 2024?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's over a trillion dollars. That's how much money is being spent in advertising. Now, if you look at advertising, it obviously correlates very closely to GDP growth, meaning advertising fuel the economy. The economy rewards advertising by giving them more money to spend.

Speaker 1:

And we all watch the Super Bowl. We know how much people spend on these things.

Speaker 2:

So it's a big part of how you grow as an organization. So traditionally, most organizations spend about 12% of their revenue in sales and advertising.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow 12%, 12%.

Speaker 2:

So for every dollar a company makes in revenue any large company about 12 cents is reinvested in that kind of activity. And then you split your money typically in three different ways Media, so placement, which is about 60%, all the stuff you saw in the Super Bowl. Sure Production, which is doing the TV spot you may have seen Again, all the actors, celebrity talent, all that good stuff like producing those amazing shots, those videos, those commercials. That's a lot of production.

Speaker 2:

And the remaining 20% is spend really with the advertising agencies that make magic happen the copywriters, the creative directors, the you know, the you know the uh and financial marketing agencies, the PR firms that you know. There's a an amazing portfolio. There's about 350,000 agencies in the U S alone advertising agencies of all sizes that help these companies, these big brands, go to market and that's how they do it. So the sophistication and the scale I mentioned is like that's a lot of money that these agencies are being given and tasked really to help this company either drive brand equity and brand value or do what we like to refer as performance marketing, which is really driving Demand okay, this is this so many layers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't even know if I want to go down this rabbit hole yet, but but um, AI, yeah, I know you and I have talked about a lot. How do you feel about AI? Do you do people stop hiring a lot? How do you feel about AI? Do people stop hiring companies like agency and all these things? You have to come pivot and do other things, or what do you think happens with AI?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, first, we are all in that's what I like to think about AI as an acronym, not artificial intelligence, but all in meaning that it's obviously penetrating basically every aspect of what we do, and the agency world has been really leveraging and investing a lot into AI because they need to leverage that technology to do anything from media buying and planning and optimization and what they call programmatic buying, which is this algorithm that just go and automatically buy and optimize whatever you see on the web or on TV. And also on the creative side. You know like I may be able to come up with concept, creative concept, far quicker using or I can really define an audience a lot better using AI. So there's a lot of tools that agencies are using to get better and they're investing heavily in doing that. Now the big guys the Google, the OpenAI those guys have been building obviously incredible making huge investment in building capabilities that the agencies are leveraging. And then clients are also investing in AI.

Speaker 2:

Now clients or brands, brand advertisers, are a little bit more cautious because we see it. We use AI in our platform. So AI technology, we apply it to different tools that we have. We have a platform and many of our tools rely on AI for certain components, but the challenge for brands is the sensitivities around using AI, around consumer-facing communications, making sure that there's a lot of regulation coming up. You know you would think the EU has been really aggressive with that. The US has been a little bit less so, but you know it's likely to kind of eventually, a lot of it is self-regulation.

Speaker 2:

Right now, advertisers say, well, if we use AI, we should probably disclose it. Good idea you don't want consumers to find out that whatever they just saw, whatever they think they were being talked to, was with a real human or whatever, when it was actually AI. So disclosure is one thing. And then there's a lot of data sensitivities on privacy, personally identified information, pii. So all these things are requiring a lot of companies to step back a bit. So they have to be very transparent and they have to regulate it. They have to regulate internally, and so we have clients who are like, hey, use AI, go for it. And we have a lot of highly regulated industry clients, like in pharmaceutical, financial services, and there's a lot more sensitivity around using AI. They have, like, these governance rules and you have to go through a government body inside a company to get approved to use AI. You have to make a case, they have to review it and approve it before they start using it. Everybody's very worried about where AI is going to go, and so it's funny.

Speaker 1:

We still got time, it's still got jobs, for the most part, to your point.

Speaker 3:

I think, a lot of time. What you're seeing is that this is supplemental to what you already do. Right, it helps you give better placements. It helps you give better. You know uh, concepts, demands, but even with something as simple as that, like, hey, I'm gonna place this or utilize this ai to help in placement, you have to get those approved as well through different uh, different clients. Why don't you get that?

Speaker 2:

approved as well. They do, they do. They are very, very particular about that, um, and agencies are obviously don't have the same level of concern, so they're a little bit more aggressive, experimenting a little bit more with it. But again, they have to disclose to the client, they have to make sure the client is comfortable with it, otherwise they could expose themselves and expose the client and the liability could be huge. So there's sensitivities around that, which is interesting. I think that's why the US has chosen not to put too much regulation in place, because they feel it would be a competitive threat. They would not be able to compete with China and other countries that are very fast on AI.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 3:

So, even like really right now, like, even if AI does develop the way we think it's going to, really the thought is it's going to cut down on production costs, it's going to increase placement. So in reality, the marketing budgets, they're more likely to be actionable and penetrable to the market and increase shares. Right, it really doesn't feel like it's a huge burden or a negative to an agency standpoint.

Speaker 2:

It's really maybe the people who are producing it, the actors and people of that nature, may lose sight of that, the big impact I think I've seen has been on production yeah they used to be like you used to like a flyer crew around the world to go shoot in an exotic place, and you have all these massive budgets and you know, and you're shooting for three days or five days or whatever. And now with ai, you know they, they are doing a lot of using a lot of you know kind of um, you know just a lot of technology. We need to replace physical locations and where they shoot and how they use talent. So it's kind of a new game that way. But, to your point, they're not looking at oh, we're going to do less of it, we're just going to do more or better, and so it's fueling, I think, just a lot of excitement around what's possible.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, because they're not going to lower their budgets. But now, instead of losing 30% on production, you can get 90% on placement, which is obviously where we see the higher penetration rates come in. So that makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 1:

You said it was a trillion dollars. I don't even imagine what it's going to continue to go over the next 10 years of advertisement. So a lot of money to be made. I know you split your time between Paris and France in general. I know we were talking about this too, but I'm just curious to see your perspective about, business-wise, like, the difference that you see in the states versus like a paris or europe. Um, what do you see as the differences, just business-wise?

Speaker 2:

well, there's, there's quite a few profound ones, obviously culturally, and you know there's entrepreneurial spirit in the us which actually led me here, which I love yes yeah, and it's a little bit more traditional, a little bit more conservative in europe. Um, and I'm to set aside politics because there's a lot of stuff going on about.

Speaker 1:

Europe and the US.

Speaker 2:

And you can see those differences really come to life lately, like you know, people making statements, politically speaking, around a number of topics, but if you think about just really from a business perspective, the US is about, I think, gdp is about $30 trillion or something. France is about $3 trillion GDP. So I think if you compare the two, there's about tenfold difference between the two in terms of size. What's interesting and I saw this statistic which I think is in the book Success Freak, success freak the productivity index, which is a GDP per hour worked, is actually equal, despite the tenfold difference between. So the French actually happen to be hyperproductive, despite the fact that they take a lot of time off.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they take vacation. How much is a vacation? The holiday they call it.

Speaker 2:

It's about. So there's about five weeks paid vacation, but really when you add the additional time it's about. So there's about five weeks paid vacation, but really, when you add the additional times, about seven weeks vacation. So it's a lot. And you know I like to joke with friends. You know people say you know, obviously, being french, you know I get a lot of that. But they say you know, like french fries, your contribution, french toast. You know, like french kiss. You know we did that one. That's a longer story, but yeah, but the one I like is actually in 1936, I don't know if you knew that, but the French went on strike and because of that they managed to get what we know today as pet vacation. The French did.

Speaker 2:

I never knew this, so it never existed until then. So pet vacation was actually created by the French in 1936.

Speaker 3:

I'll thank them for that.

Speaker 2:

So now I mean Wow, I never knew this. Yeah, the US, I think, is maybe the only country in the world where, at the federal level, you're not obligated to provide pedification. I think most countries are, but it's a best practice and that's why people see it everywhere. But the French, actually, yeah, that was one of their big contribution to the world.

Speaker 3:

Man salute to the French. That's the best one you like that one.

Speaker 1:

I like the French kiss too, though. Oh yeah, that's a good one too. You said French kiss too. Yo, that's amazing. Let's talk about your book then, yeah, so this one really caught my attention. The Success Freak Kick Ass in Seven Days. What is this actual book about?

Speaker 2:

So you know, I've always been really passionate about topics that are a little bit nebulous, like you know. So I wrote books, you know, about beauty and business partnerships, and success was one of those very interesting, almost obsessional topic for a lot of people, like everybody's obsessed. You know, there's a fine line sometimes between obsession and addiction. You know, like, we're all addicted to success, obsessed about success, and there's something healthy about it. Well, you know, I, for me, um, there's a healthy obsession about success, so it's not an oxymoron uh, not to me at least. I think you can actually be obsessed and and do good, lead to really good, positive outcomes when, when you put the right amount of energy. But a lot of people, I think, um, are struggling with it.

Speaker 2:

Success, for me, is another way of what is our definition of happiness right? How do we reach that state? And in a dopamine culture you know that we live in where, you know, for a lot of people, happiness is really about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and sometimes, you know, in my opinion, it's a lot more than that. It's finding kind of what I like. Oliver Twist has a great quote I love. He says there's two important moments in life. I don't know if you heard that quote, but he says it's the moment you're born and the moment you find that why.

Speaker 2:

And for me, success is really about finding your why, and people really spend years sometimes feeling that void, not knowing their why, and so I wanted to write a book that would be digestible for most people. Most of the books people read are thick. They're like full of stories of people that maybe they can relate to, maybe they can't. You know this biography from these highly successful people they may never be able to replicate.

Speaker 2:

So I wanted to write something very pragmatic, something you could consume in a reasonable amount of time, so you don't put that book on your bookshelves or on your nightstand, read it and remind yourself to finish the chapter you never finished and go back to it six months later. So that's why I wrote it in a way that was digestible. Again, in seven days. I wanted to really identify and extract what I thought, through countless interviews and successful people I've met over the years. What are those seven most essential skills that will really propel you forward? And then, how can I give you those skills? To acquire one skill per day, one chapter per day, so within one week you can actually bring this to life.

Speaker 2:

It's not seven years, this is easy, yeah, yeah fantastic Can you give us one Can you give us one of those, I'll give you one. I'll give you the first one.

Speaker 3:

Which one, as you're researching through the book to try to create the book, what was the experience that you found or learned that maybe you didn't already know, that you thought was, you know, pretty profound or insightful?

Speaker 2:

So if I, if I were to ask you every, every one of you just, you know what's your what do you think are those essential skills for success? We may all come with a different set of skills, and it's okay, um, and you know, if we ask 20 people we'll probably get 20 different things. What I was interested in is what are those again that are common to most of these stories? So I really wanted to kind of extract the one that I'm most telling. And there's an usual suspect, you know you might think okay, well, tenacity, you know, like, you know the expression, like we fail to remember sometimes that 98% of people give up too early work for the 2% who never stopped, you know type of thing. So give up too early work for the 2% who never stopped, you know type of thing. So all these kind of cliches and stereotypes around what makes success true, and a lot of it working hard, you know, like applying yourself, you know, and all these things are true.

Speaker 2:

But the first chapter I picked that I'm very passionate about because to me it's at the core of challenging some preconceived notions we have in our society, the social norm around what success is like wealth, fame, power, which those are the most common ones and we idealize them in our culture, right Like in everything we do.

Speaker 2:

We're like that's what we look up to, that's what we again, we world. And I wanted to introduce the concept that success is very personal. All definitions of success should be personal. So the first chapter is about really coming up with your own personal definition of success, because if you don't have it, you'll never really truly be successful in your own terms. You'll be successful maybe on the terms of, maybe what your parents think success should be, or your friends or society, or again, you know, in your environment. But it's a very personal quest for first to define that, and so I give some examples of that of people and ask them you know, how do you think? You know, do you think their fame or their wealth is their means of definition of success? And when you start thinking about it you realize there's a lot more than those, really, in my mind, primitive concept, and so that's the first chapter is really exploring that.

Speaker 1:

Setting a foundation for yourself. I mean kicking off strong.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's solid. That's solid man, man, my kids read this man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's excellent. I don't even know where else to go with this. I've got so many questions for you, that's definitely a great insight.

Speaker 3:

I think for us one kind of kick off with the book. What it's about specifically. What about the process of rating a book? I think that's one thing to go through. Now you're on multiple books. You've gone through this process a few different times. Does every time get a little easier? Is every time the same challenge?

Speaker 1:

And before I forget too, you had an audio book coming out. I'm going to share that too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank, frickies, actually will be available as an audiobook on March 11th. You'll be first available on one of the major audio distributors and then, I think, within a week, you'll be available on Spotify and Apple and Amazon.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to get that. I'm an audio person. I haven't read in a long time.

Speaker 2:

And it's not my voice.

Speaker 3:

We need your voice. No, we do a passion.

Speaker 1:

We need your voice. I would love to hear your voice. No, I do a passion. We need your voice. I would have loved to hear your voice.

Speaker 2:

I love what I do and I am truly passionate. But yeah, I ended up hiring a voice talent. When they sent me samples to pick out of nine different voices, I listened to it and I listened to the voice. I was listening to what the voice was reading. It was a male voice and I'm like this is good stuff. I'm like I wonder what he's reading. Like what book is it? I didn't realize it was my own book?

Speaker 2:

No way, because I never heard it from that perspective, Like I wrote it. I could see in writing, but just hearing it.

Speaker 3:

You could hear it in your head and I'm like I had a little moment of pride.

Speaker 2:

I was like what is this? This is my doing. So I was very excited. No, so the book is coming out. It will be just another way for people to digest the book. To answer your question, the process of writing a book. I meet a lot of people that feel like they have a book in them and the way I you know, and it's inspiring to me that so many people have so much to share to the world and I wish more people did it. A lot of people say it, never really follow through with it, and it's unfortunate because I can tell you again.

Speaker 2:

When I moved to the US, I was in my little dorm studying to get my degree in the US, didn't speak English. Every night I tell that story in the book. Every night I was writing on a piece of paper. I had one piece of paper for every letter of the alphabet and every day I learned a new word and I would write it down and my wall was covered with paper and that's how I learned really quickly to speak well enough to be able to graduate. And the reason I mentioned that is because I would have never thought that one day I would actually be writing books. I'm actually writing on my another book yeah, that's coming up next year, called the client of choice, but I'm so I'm working on that.

Speaker 2:

But the point is, you know, if me, an immigrant, if you will, barely speaking English, can write a book, my take on it is everyone can and maybe should consider writing a book. So that's my first thing, but it takes a long time. You have to be really passionate about what you do, you have to be consistent, you have to apply yourself and I think the most important thing for me, because we all have, we all have our own artistic band. I cannot sing. Don't ask me to sing. I cannot play an instrument, but writing is something I enjoy doing and I think you get good at what you enjoy doing. Yeah, and it's also doesn't feel like you're working at it.

Speaker 2:

If you're writing a book and never you don't like writing, I'll say forget it, like Maybe hire somebody to do that, but just don't, don't, please, it's going to be brutal. So, because it took me about four years my first book, I'm getting a little better now. The next one is going to take me about a year to write it, so it's much more efficient, and then it takes another year, I think, to get it ready. So I work with my publisher. I have a literary agent. I'm probably going to work with the same publisher again. Then they have their own process where they do their own editing. Then you have to print it, you know, and then you have to get it distributed and then you have to market it. So all these things are important steps in a multi-year process really. So it takes a lot of dedication.

Speaker 3:

That's a lot. Yeah, I didn't know all that.

Speaker 1:

And I was curious do you have a journal where you just write notes in and just like what's your process like? Do you voice it with your phone and reference?

Speaker 2:

it. I can't even write down with a pen very well. My handwriting is awful these days.

Speaker 2:

So because I live in tech, I'm just I just, yeah, I use tech tools and I've always kind of done that. It's much easier for me to organize it on, you know, that way. So, yeah, no, no handwriting, no notebook, but it's finding the time really to do that. Like I'm writing I think I mentioned to you I'm writing. I'm trying to finish a screenplay, my first one, first time I'm doing fiction. Most of my writing is nonfiction, but I'm so I'm challenging myself. It's actually a vaudeville, you know so, comedy type of thing. I'm almost done with it. Very challenging for me because I'm not a fictional writer and certainly writing humor, you know like, and it's.

Speaker 1:

But you have a very good sense of humor, so I know that yeah, it would do well.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's very nice of you, but you have to be in the right mindset to write that kind of stuff. And it's true for any writing. You know like I write. When I'm inspired, I'm not. I can't say I'm going to write Mondays and Tuesdays between 6 and 8. It doesn't work that way. The energy is right. Yeah, If I'm like, oh, this is my time, I feel it. I'm like, leave me alone, I'm writing, that's my time to write.

Speaker 1:

That's good, and I think any artist is like that.

Speaker 2:

I don't think painters will. I don't think Picasso was saying, hey, from 6 to 8, I'm going to go and start painting. He's like suddenly he probably will close his door and do this for three days without eating because he failed the calling. So I think you have to follow your calling.

Speaker 3:

That makes sense. You never know when it's going to come up either. I think that's why they'd say a lot of writers write like the first thing is because they wake up in the morning, because they're just randomly inspired by something.

Speaker 1:

People just leave notebooks as a journal method, like writing on a bedside, just be able to write up once it pops up.

Speaker 3:

So I up, you know, once it pops up so in the mind. And those who do, I admire them. Yeah, I'm just not one of them. I I just can't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like stephen king I think he did raid for every single day for the rest of his life and be mine. But so you were a french foreign trade advisor, right, yes, for period. Can you kind of share just building relationships is your thing and being able to break it down simplistically, you know, through your books and different nuggets and things. Can you kind of share with us just how our listeners could build better relationships? Maybe it's in business-wise or personal. You know what's one tip that you can actually share for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so first I did some work, as you mentioned, as an economic advisor for the. French Ministry of Commerce, really helping French companies and American companies collaborate better. So whether they were looking to attract talent or export talent or export technology or import technology, but finding ways to work. So I did that for a number of years and it was very rewarding to be really this kind of super connector to the world of business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

And it felt very natural to me because, to your point, I dedicated really my career to help companies collaborate better and that's been really the journey I've been on ever since. So but your point about how do you go about doing that? What's fascinating about business partnerships is that there are a lot of similarities with personal relationships. Right, a lot of the concept and principles about trust, you know, and transparency and communication and you know, respect, and you know a lot of these concepts are really naturally expandable to the business world.

Speaker 2:

Now, it's not that simple in business, in the business world, no, it's not that simple in business.

Speaker 2:

In the business world, you have these commercial relationships and you have these additional layers, multidimensional layers of complexity that you have to account for. And I would say the level of loyalty sometimes is not as strong, hopefully, as you would expect in a personal relationship, because you know once a partner doesn't really cut it anymore. You know you might be very quick to look if the grass is greener somewhere else 1,000% yeah and maybe explore other partnerships and so on, and sometimes not in the most, you know, obvious or direct way. So but I think the you know, I think if you are naturally inclined to build a relationship with people. You do that naturally within your family environment, within your community of friends, and you know, I think there's a lot of these personality traits that apply to the business world that you can use, and then the rest you just have to learn. You know, by again practicing, and there's a lot of resources online, seminars, online. You know great shows like yours, you know where you can pick up a lot of these skills, and that's a journey we're all on.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting Very much so I wanted to touch just a little bit about your foundation. Right, this thing Trafficking Agers was huge. It's taken over the world a lot of times. You want to share a little bit about your foundation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you want to share a little bit about your foundation. Yeah, I had the opportunity years ago to meet Emma Thompson, the Two Times Academy winner. Emma was at the time the chairman of the Ellen Bomber Foundation, which was Ellen Bomber was a Holocaust survivor, really big on you know, big human activist, yeah, and she started a foundation called Ellen Bomer Foundation that was really helping victim of sex trafficking recover from the traumatic experience they had and so and Emma got involved through these and that's a story she shared with me because she lives in London and and you know, a lot of time you think about sex trafficking as these, I don't know, maybe Middle, middle Eastern or like Eastern Europe or like South Asia kind of phenomenon, and it's in the US. It was in London and she met a victim of sex trafficking. Somebody was abducted a block away where Emma lives and that was kind of the opening moment for Emma to really think about it.

Speaker 2:

So they started a number of projects. They started one in Amsterdam where they did kind of a sort of art display, if you will, where they put these amazing containers, these shipping containers, and they connected them almost like as you walk through them, and it was the journey of somebody being sex trafficked. Every container was a segment of a as you walk through them and it was the journey of somebody being sex trafficked. Every container was a segment of that life and what it looked like and it was very, very deep and.

Speaker 2:

But that was a challenge because to move these they tried they. I think they moved it to a couple of locations, but it was a logistical nightmare really to move these containers and do that. So they pivoted and then I ended up meeting another gentleman that is a well-known photographer for Vogue and you know British as well, scottish actually, but living in London, and he started taking pictures of Emma's friends, city buddies, women in their safe place, and the project got called Safe and so they were taking pictures of where women felt the safest and it could be. I feel like that blew up. I felt like I saw Safe.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it became kind of a sensational thing. So I went to London they did an auction where they were auctioning pictures at the Dewberry kind of auction house and then I got involved really helping you know the work they were doing, trying to raise awareness for, for the cause and learning in the process that sex trafficking, which is we human slavery, is one of the most lucrative, sadly, form of you know um that's crazy, you know illegal activity if you will, and and you know that affects, you know women.

Speaker 2:

You know illegal activity if you will, and you know that affects, you know women. You know men, children, in such a profound way and to your point I wouldn't be. I know that it comes up from time to time. Vegas is only another spot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, part of the triangle. Yeah, so to me, I became very passionate about that. I have a lot of you know. I have a daughter, I have a son. I always felt like you know. The stories of these people that were impacted by it were so incredibly touching and it's such a tragedy that in today's world that doesn't get more of a priority. So I love to be able to get involved and support that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was great. It's too much to ask you. The Bruno movie is going to be coming out soon.

Speaker 2:

We will produce that man.

Speaker 1:

You got too much that you do man too many layers to you, which is excellent Business advice, I have to have you to say something. As far as a nugget, I know your book. I know all they need to do is read one of your books to get the nuggets. But what can you share? Just business advice maybe, with somebody that wants to start their own business, Maybe they want to follow the career with tech space. But what would you share with them that could be helpful?

Speaker 2:

Well, starting your business. I can think of a lot of different things you could do. I mean, clearly, the first one I mentioned in the first chapter is really finding your why. I think once you do that, everything seems much easier. For sure I think when you don't have that, I think that's where you struggle.

Speaker 1:

Get lost yeah.

Speaker 2:

So you want to start there. Secondly, you there's always a lot of unknown. You know, when we started our company, I remember I was I downsized, I was working at Visa at the time. I had a good job in the Bay, beautiful place, exotic life a little bit and I moved to Seattle. I had to make some adjustments. I sold my car, got a small car, got a small footprint, the place where I was living and I was like I didn't know where I was going to get the next paycheck. That's true entrepreneurship, right. And so there's a lot of unknown and fear associated with that. And you have to be ready for experiencing that unknown and that fear and face it, you know, heads on, and there's nothing that will prepare for it. You know a lot of people say, oh, I'll do it when I'm ready. You're never ready.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know we want to do this podcast. My wife kept making fun of me for two years.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, that's true, you have to throw yourself in it and if you love what you do, it's going to feel very instinctive and very natural, and I think things will. What you don't know I always. People come to me all the time and they ask me what I value most in people. When I hire people, we we work with, and there's two things that come to mind is aptitude and willingness, and if I have to choose, I will take willingness of aptitude every day, because what you don't know you can learn. But I'm not in the business and I said, say that all the time to motivate people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's tough If you're not motivated.

Speaker 2:

I'm not your cheerleader. If you're not excited to do what you do, you know you got to do something else. But if you don't know what you don't know, you know. If you're curious enough and you want to apply yourself, things will come your way. And I'm far I would want anything else.

Speaker 1:

I love, that that's great insights. I was just talking to my kids about that.

Speaker 3:

You sound like you're in our study. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

You know I got to ask you this. We talk about restaurants and I love hearing from you where you eat at, but what is your favorite restaurant in Vegas? Or maybe not favorite, because you eat a lot?

Speaker 2:

I do Give us a of of where you would recommend I do, I, I do, um what you would think, I would pick a french restaurant. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna surprise you and not pick one um.

Speaker 1:

The one I like is wally's wally's, I'd raise all the world and you introduced me to one of the guys from wally's at your party.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I have a good friend of mine that works there. That was the place where I had my first date with my girl, but what I like is really a nice blend of sophistication and casual. Great wine, right yeah, it's a wine bar restaurant, but it also has a market in the back where you can actually buy some cheese and amazing things, Say your friend's name.

Speaker 1:

I apologize, serge Serge. I'm coming to your friend's name. I apologize, serge Serge. I'm coming to see you, serge Great man, serge Jules.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and he's a maître d' there, great guy, and if you go there he'll give you a tour. There's an amazing selection of wine, probably the largest selection of wine in Vegas, and they have over 100 wines, choices by the glass. This is in Resorts World, right, yeah?

Speaker 1:

it's Resorts.

Speaker 2:

World. So one of my favorite spots because again it's a good blend of sophistication but also casual. There's a lot of seating, different options for seating and again the wine selection is. I mean, you would have expected that from me a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's amazing because you're the only person to bring up Wallace. Nobody else has brought up Wallace.

Speaker 3:

Give us something from a restaurant.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's good. I heard great things about it, so I'm going to check it out.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, okay, yeah, wine has been a passion of mine for, obviously, being French, I have no choice French yeah. Y'all got some of the best wine in the world, france.

Speaker 1:

If I didn't say that. That's awesome, man. What else man? What else anything? We forgot to ask you that you want to maybe leave us out on. I know you got another book. You're working on Screenplay. What's something else? The?

Speaker 2:

Screenplay yeah, that new book that's going to be a business book coming up soon. I publish a lot because I like writing Again. It comes naturally to me.

Speaker 2:

I publish in Forbes on a regular basis and I like to share. You know I like to again it's very impulse writing, like something come to me. But I also like to inspire myself from things around the world and I bring them into context, if you will, in ideas that I want to share. So that's why, again in Success Freak, I love, and even in my book Agency Mania, I love the concept I start with like things you would not expect, like you know what's, for example, one of the chapters I start is I talk about sweating sweat and how it's a multi-billion industry and how we spend billions trying not to sweat, and yet it's one of the most natural thing and probably one of the most healthy thing you need to do.

Speaker 2:

That's funny. Get rid of toxins, you know.

Speaker 1:

moisturize your body all these things you want to actually sweat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and to me that was a chapter to introduce how it's important, like failure, to accept that failure is a good thing too, because that's how you learn. So I take a lot of these ideas and concepts and introduce new concepts and make it interesting along the way hopefully, Bruno.

Speaker 1:

I could talk to you for hours, man. You do a great job we need to have you come on every year, man. Just give us a breakdown of what you're doing. Man, you're motivating, but organically. It's not just pep talk, it's actually real stuff.

Speaker 3:

So I appreciate you, it's your passion. You can definitely tell yeah, pep talk it's actually real stuff, so I appreciate your passion.

Speaker 2:

You can definitely tell you yeah, yeah, for sure, man, I do I do.

Speaker 1:

Um, what's your social handles, man? People can reach out to you on here.

Speaker 2:

So it's my name. So if you, bruno Galpois um you can find me on Instagram. Yeah, I post quite a bit. You're too kind, james.

Speaker 1:

Bond man, james Bond, that's awesome.

Speaker 3:

You're too kind, I wish Although we all, we do, we all do.

Speaker 1:

We'll work on that, but an absolute pleasure to hang out with you, man. Seriously, Thanks for having me, I love everything that you're doing, man, and the impact you're making on the world. So check us out at thevegascirclecom. I appreciate your We'll see you next time.