Tyler Head with CGI Digital

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Kid Biz Radio. Kid Biz Radio creates conversations about the power of entrepreneurship and the positive impact that journey can have on kids. For more information, go to kidbizexpo.com. Now here’s your host.

Layla Dierdorff: [00:00:28] Hi. Welcome to Kid Biz Radio. I’m Layla.

Austyn Guest: [00:00:31] And I’m Austyn.

Layla Dierdorff: [00:00:32] And today we have an awesome guest with us in the studio, Tyler Head with CGI. Hello.

Tyler Head: [00:00:37] Thanks for having me, guys. Happy to be here.

Austyn Guest: [00:00:39] Can you tell us about yourself and about your business?

Tyler Head: [00:00:42] Yeah, so kind of a weird path to CGI covering a couple of different states in about a half a decade of time. But what we do is digital economic development. So a lot of moving parts, it sounds like breaks down pretty simply. We help municipalities curate quality control. The first impression they make online kind of as a whole, specifically on the home page of their municipal website. Who uses it versus who you would expect to use. It may be surprising to some of you, but kind of wholesale across the board, we produce a video series that acts as the first impression for your community, in this case Cherokee County’s, who were working with. And then my role individually is to meet with all the nonprofits, the businesses, the community as a whole to help them improve the digital infrastructure of the place that they live so that it’s more attractive for the people that they want to attract and they get the right folks moving in and grow the way that they want to grow. In a nutshell.

Austyn Guest: [00:01:41] We have a lot of workshops focusing on like your first like appearance and impressions and stuff.

Tyler Head: [00:01:46] Well, that’s that’s the name of the game. You think about bounce rates on websites and making first impressions. You kind of get one shot these days and yeah, and then you’re out of there.

Austyn Guest: [00:01:56] Yeah. How did you get started in your business?

Tyler Head: [00:02:00] So interesting story. Okay. I was a young whippersnapper myself managing some beach clubs down in Florida and got recruited out of it from, I guess just being able to talk well at people got into radio at that point and then was noticed by a Chamber of Commerce director by the name of Kelly Jo Kilburg, who ended up being one of my long time mentors, even to this day, recruited me into the chamber of Commerce world, at which point I worked with CGI on the other side of the table brought them into our community. Some people are familiar with it. Santa Rosa Beach, the third area down in the Gulf Coast of Florida, went through the whole process with CGI. I love the model, the community impact that they have and the intervening years I moved on from the chamber, launched my own consulting firm, and my wife received an opportunity, now wife, to relocate home back to Knoxville for a super amazing job for her. And I went with her because we weren’t going to say no to that. And CGI was actually opening up an office in Knoxville. So I shuttered my firm headfirst promotions and said, Hey guys, I would like to do what you guys do for you. I’m here in Knoxville. Let me be your Southern representative and I will make all these folks that sound and look like me, like you. And that was about six years ago. So business is booming.

Austyn Guest: [00:03:25] Very, very nice. On your path to becoming what you are now. What have you done to really help you be successful?

Tyler Head: [00:03:33] To speak on mentorship, which is something I helped create within CGI as our first mentorship program that we’ve had as a company. The not many, but the few people I’ve had that have been more senior in the industry and not in any particular industry to look to, to give you the structure of here’s the things that you need to be good at and excel with. To have success really gives you the launch pad. So looking for quality mentorship, but also challenging the boundaries of what you should be or shouldn’t be doing within your scope of activity. So pushing it just a little bit on the line, seeing where there’s new things that can be done, where there’s maybe deficiencies in a process and all the while kind of looking to the people that have guided you along the way to tell me if I’m getting too far out of hand, reel me back in if you need to, but let us keep let us keep going. And those mentors are Guideposts along the way. But it’s really just kind of figuring out what works and what doesn’t work for you individually, because not everybody is the same.

Austyn Guest: [00:04:40] Are you a mentor for someone?

Tyler Head: [00:04:42] I have. I have several mentors within our company, actually. My latest mentor, just one miss or mentee. Actually, I’m the mentor. Let me get the terminology straight. Just won Miss Pennsylvania, USA. So she’s actually going to be in the Miss America contest.

Austyn Guest: [00:04:57] That’s really cool. That is very cool.

Tyler Head: [00:05:00] Rooting for you, Jasmine. Yes, rooting for you.

Austyn Guest: [00:05:02] That’s really pretty. All right. Okay. What would you say you like? Define success as.

Tyler Head: [00:05:09] Well. The easy answer is financial security, right? That’s kind of how everybody would answer. Everybody would label it as that. I think that’s an aspect of success because if you’re not hitting that mark, then you’re going to be a lot more stressed out and looking for ways to do so. A little more difficult, but I would say it’s financial security, married with fulfillment and what you do on a day to day basis. I enjoy my role day to day. I enjoy traveling to these communities and interacting with business owners and nonprofit leaders and people that are out there cutting their teeth, trying to do the same thing and improve their circumstances. I could I could do this job for free. But back to that financial security thing, you kind of need both. So I would say it’s a marriage of those two.

Austyn Guest: [00:05:57] That’s actually really good because a lot a lot, a lot of people say like, you don’t need money to be happy. You just need happiness. But like you say, money helps. It’s it’s easier to be happy with some money. Yeah, Yeah. Some people say like strictly financially, like successful or like you don’t need money to be happy. There’s like, no in between answers.

Tyler Head: [00:06:16] You got to have that gray area because it does. You got to be fulfilled in the day to day.

Austyn Guest: [00:06:21] I would probably say success would be definitely a mix of what you were saying. Like money definitely helps. And but there’s also other ways to be successful without said money in many different aspects of life, whether it’s business related or it’s just personally. Um. I can have a little story, I guess. Okay. In my first expo that I did, I made, like, the least amount of money that I’ve ever made, but it was my favorite because people were so, like, happy and like, I was like, talking to each other and it was really fun. So like, yeah, I didn’t make a lot of money, but it was still my favorite one just because like we were all talking to each other and ask each other questions and stuff. Yeah, it was the first one we did. So it was a very fun experience.

Tyler Head: [00:07:11] And you can still have the excitement and it’s the experience and that’s, that’s a benefit of what I do is every community is different. So it’s always a new type of situation, economic scenario, strengths, weaknesses. So that does keep it fresh for me. So I do think that probably works in my benefit from being able to just be fulfilled day to day. But you have to go and find that kind of excitement because you can lose sight of it chasing the dollar really, really quickly. Yeah. So it’s kind of going back to that marriage between the two is like, how do I keep that earnestness as I go through, you know, on a day to day basis? I.

Austyn Guest: [00:07:46] All right. What would you say or maybe some regrets that you have when you were starting up your business?

Tyler Head: [00:07:54] Oh, there’s plenty.

Austyn Guest: [00:07:57] The first few.

Tyler Head: [00:07:58] A big one, I would say, is there’s a lot of negativity in the world today, especially with people that think they know more than you about you getting advice from folks. I mentioned mentorship, right? Everybody wants to tell you what to do in the way that you can do it, right? A true mentor is really just sort of a resource for you to help you along, not dictate the terms of what your existence is going to be. And early on, I would use the term like, yes, man a little bit. Specifically, when I was in radio at first and doing sports talk and talking football and hosting things, you know, they would tell you something that would or wouldn’t work based on their experience with it. And that’s not necessarily accurate.

Austyn Guest: [00:08:41] Maybe I can make it work.

Tyler Head: [00:08:42] Yeah, exactly. So like letting that negativity naysaying kind of bleed into my motivation and the goal setting that I was doing, I did a little bit too much of it on the front end because I was trying to humor the people around me. But everything really started to take off when I just sort of let my individual nature take over, you know, trust the people I know I can trust. Everybody else is. They’ve got some sort of agency in the game where they’re you look too good. It may negatively affect them or, you know, they give you some some bad advice that you follow and it reflects back on everybody. So I would say stick by your guns. Know what you know, seek help from the people that you know you can trust with advice. And that’s that’s one big one that comes to mind. The next would probably be not sleeping enough. You definitely should get like the full ten hours on hours.

Austyn Guest: [00:09:37] That’s a.

Tyler Head: [00:09:37] Lot. It catches up with you over a few years. I know this is Kid Biz Radio. You guys got plenty of energy. Give it like 4 or 5 more years. Caffeine becomes a best friend or a worst enemy. Really quick.

Austyn Guest: [00:09:51] Okay. Pretty much answered the next question. So if you want to if you have any more, you can say, But do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to help prevent or kind of like lessen the mistakes that you made?

Tyler Head: [00:10:03] Well, obviously, get the good sleep. That’s that’s an easy one. Yeah. You know, in bed by ten if you can help it. But, you know, the other one’s kind of hard because especially when you’re in your youth and you’re maybe being employed by someone or you’re looking to other people to kind of help you along your path, like you’re looking for those answers, but kind of keep your North Star is what I would leave you with as far as a way to avoid that type of situation where the negativity can bleed into you a little bit, know where you’re going and know what you’re trying to do, and let those things kind of ping pong you along the pathway, but don’t let it ever knock you off the path. So keeping your North Star, staying on your track, listening to what everybody has to say, but also playing it pretty close to the chest, like don’t let anybody sway you one way or the other until you’ve really thought it through from your perspective. And that is something that’s hard to do when you’re younger because you don’t have the experience to fall back on. That just comes with time. There’s no way around it. You’ve just got to you’ve got to make mistakes and screw it up sometimes, but you learn from that. Just don’t ever let anybody else be the one that that knocks you off the path.

Austyn Guest: [00:11:13] Listen, but then form your own opinion.

Speaker3: [00:11:15] Exactly. Yeah.

Austyn Guest: [00:11:16] My mom tells me that a lot. Anyway.

Tyler Head: [00:11:18] Good reason. Good, Mom.

Austyn Guest: [00:11:19] So we’ve been talking a lot about, like, we’ve been talking a lot about the past. Now on to the future. Do you have any future goals for your business?

Tyler Head: [00:11:26] Yeah, absolutely. With CGI, we’ve we’ve been around for a while now. We cover the whole country, so we’ve got a decent amount of scale. One thing we need to do better at is having people understand who we are on the front end of things instead of kind of having to have a 45 minute long conversation with me and be like, Oh, this makes sense. We do a better job of situations like this, conversations like this, really putting out our good work to the country, working with thousands of communities and hundreds of thousands of businesses at this point. You know, all the local nonprofits in the community work with us, you know, at no cost. We’re a resource for every single organization in this community to look to. And it’s not even anything that necessarily has to be paid for on the front end. Every business I meet with gets a complimentary audit of their entire online presence. So here’s where you’re strong, here’s where you’re weak, here’s where you can develop, here’s where you can do things on your own. Here’s where we can maybe help you. And a lot of communities aren’t aware of that. And so my big goal over the next 3 to 4 years is to transition us to being more in the forefront of our projects rather than just being the facilitator on the back end, which is sort of by designation. We’re a third party complimenter so we do things that a municipality. Can’t do because of conflict of interest or legal, you know, things that could happen by selective favoritism in communities. But we do a really, really good job at it, and I think that needs to be pushed more to the forefront that way. Situations like this occur, more people reach out to me, I get phone calls and I don’t have to individually pop up and say, Hey, my name is Tyler with CGI. Heard a lot about you. We’d like to have a meeting. Yeah, because that just limits our efficiency and takes more time.

Austyn Guest: [00:13:15] Correct.

Tyler Head: [00:13:15] And the more we can do to kind of evangelize the good things that we do throughout the country, the easier my job gets and I can get back to that fulfillment part.

Speaker3: [00:13:25] Great.

Austyn Guest: [00:13:25] All right. So moving on to the deep questions.

Speaker3: [00:13:28] Bring it.

Austyn Guest: [00:13:29] All right. If you had the attention of the whole world for five minutes, what would you say? Everybody’s paying attention. Everybody’s listening to what you are saying for five minutes. What do you say?

Tyler Head: [00:13:40] If you could all just Venmo me $1?

Speaker3: [00:13:44] No, no.

Austyn Guest: [00:13:44] But for the most realistic answer we’ve.

Speaker3: [00:13:47] Gotten.

Tyler Head: [00:13:48] For $1, you can make this gentleman’s life way easier. And then Sarah McLaughlin just kind of chimes in.

Speaker3: [00:13:54] Yeah.

Tyler Head: [00:13:55] And I’m sad behind like a fence. Now, I would say division is all you see kind of around the world. Now you turn on the news, bad news, you look around, you hear gossip and negative talk and naysayers. Everybody is making it up as they go along. For the most part, we have way more things in common as humans than we have things different between us. Share a.

Speaker3: [00:14:22] Meal.

Tyler Head: [00:14:24] Share a meal. Get together in a room with people you maybe don’t get along with. You’ll see the commonalities in your life. Yeah, get over it. It’s not that serious. People just get along. Like work it out. That’s. That’s what I would say, especially if they have to listen, which is, you know, that’s the prompt. So if they want to take something to heart, it’s just play nice, get along, you know, figure, share drinks, share a meal. You guys will, you guys will be fine.

Austyn Guest: [00:14:50] I would probably like fix the world if you actually got to say that.

Speaker3: [00:14:53] Yeah, well.

Tyler Head: [00:14:54] If they had to.

Speaker3: [00:14:55] Prevent World War three happening.

Tyler Head: [00:14:56] And hopefully I had enough translators to, you know.

Speaker3: [00:14:58] Get it out there.

Austyn Guest: [00:14:59] Oh, yeah, that’s true. That’s very true. Okay. If you woke up tomorrow without your business, everything was gone. What would what would be your first steps to recovery or would you try to recover?

Tyler Head: [00:15:09] I mean. My skill set, what I bring to conversations and my role as a consultant, I think is going to be a need either way, whether my company existed or not. You know, if the office disappeared tomorrow, the people that are out there in the country, the business owners, entrepreneurs that are trying to figure out how to, you know, they’re really good at this thing. That’s their day to day life. And there’s all the other things that surround that that supplement that or don’t. I think I would be fine based on what I’m able to bring to the table and and help them with. So I wouldn’t be too rattled one way or the other. It wouldn’t be fun. But but I do think, especially with how the Internet has changed the dynamics of how people live their lives and run their businesses with what we do, the phone would be ringing the next day, even if it wasn’t for the business, because someone’s going to have the same headache, someone’s going to have the same problems, they’re going to have the thing they’re trying to work towards from a goal standpoint. And I would still be able to help them there. So it wouldn’t be the big box shop that we are now, but it would still be me just in the trenches helping them out the best that I can.

Austyn Guest: [00:16:19] You talked about how technology changed all that. Do you think your company will change with the evolution of technology?

Tyler Head: [00:16:25] We have been very good about staying in front of the tides of technology. We started out as if you’ve ever been to a vacation town and you see like the map of the community that’s painted with all the businesses and the main streets, that’s where we started. And now we have video driven AI powered websites that turn your entire website into basically what people are programed to use via social media. So we can turn a business’s website into a social media platform for them through a platform we have called Seesaw. And that’s just the newest thing. Before that it was voice search ability and then it was video and integrating video into your day to day life and your business. We’ve always done a very, very good job of forecasting what’s coming next and being in front of that. So we will continue to do so and to stay out in front of it. I is sort of the new hot commodity that everybody’s either stressed about or super excited about.

Speaker3: [00:17:26] Yeah, yeah.

Austyn Guest: [00:17:27] Everyone has something.

Tyler Head: [00:17:28] We’ve been incorporating it into our services and our business model for the last 4 or 5 years now. Even when it was before it was there’s a dime a dozen and everybody was just kind of rolling with IBM. Watson We were doing things with AI just to kind of keep it, you know, teased in people’s minds. There’s new things that are coming and the world is changing. Well, the thing that people need to understand is you can’t stop that part. You just got to figure out how to make it work for you.

Austyn Guest: [00:17:56] Yeah, people try to like no technology.

Tyler Head: [00:17:59] No, no, no, no. A lot of the rural towns I work with, they think the Internet is going to ruin their business. And it can because.

Speaker3: [00:18:05] But it can also benefit you.

Tyler Head: [00:18:07] If they avoid it and they run away from the Internet, then it will ruin their business because everybody that’s actually utilizing it, that’s a competitor is going to be who gets that business. And so I’ll meet with 80, 90 year old, fourth generation owned, family owned businesses who have never done anything with the Internet at all. And I’d be like, Hey, baby steps, like, let’s start with this. And then computer. And that’s what digital economic development is. That’s what CGI does, is we introduce these concepts and these methods to areas that maybe aren’t familiar with them a lot more. So now are and, you know, it’s normal day to day business, but I still find areas every now and then where, wow, we didn’t know this worked this way or I didn’t know I could do this. And it’s exciting to it’s exciting to bring that kind of stuff to the table and see their eyes light up like a little kid on Christmas up there, you know, my great grandparent age.

Speaker3: [00:18:56] Yeah.

Austyn Guest: [00:18:56] Yeah, that’s besides the point. Okay. All right. So we’re going to do a quick this or that, like, sort of speed round questions just for fun and like, yay.

Speaker3: [00:19:05] I’m trusting.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:06] You be like two different options and you’re going to say really quickly, like, no thinking about.

Speaker3: [00:19:09] It. Okay, I’m.

Tyler Head: [00:19:10] Good at not thinking.

Speaker3: [00:19:12] Okay.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:12] All right, here we go. Cats or dogs.

Tyler Head: [00:19:15] Have both.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:16] Cats. Spider-man or Batman. Batman books or movies.

Tyler Head: [00:19:20] Books, long shot.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:21] Waffle or curly.

Speaker3: [00:19:22] Fries, curly.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:23] Mountains or the.

Speaker3: [00:19:24] Beach.

Tyler Head: [00:19:25] Lived in both would say beach at this point.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:27] Sweet or salty.

Speaker3: [00:19:28] Salty.

Tyler Head: [00:19:29] Savory.

Speaker3: [00:19:30] Guy.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:30] Chocolate or fruity.

Speaker3: [00:19:31] Candy chocolate.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:33] Cake or.

Speaker3: [00:19:33] Pie.

Tyler Head: [00:19:34] Pie Specifically key lime.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:36] Yes. Very good answer.

Speaker3: [00:19:39] Okay.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:40] Lower high rise.

Speaker3: [00:19:41] Jeans.

Tyler Head: [00:19:42] Live through the 2000s. So? So all the low rise phase. Ask my wife. We probably have to say high rise at this point without getting in.

Speaker3: [00:19:48] Trouble with her. Probably a good.

Austyn Guest: [00:19:50] Answer. Comedy or horror, like any book.

Tyler Head: [00:19:53] What about a comedy horror?

Speaker3: [00:19:55] Those are.

Tyler Head: [00:19:56] Really good. Jordan Peele But I would say comedy off the front end.

Austyn Guest: [00:20:00] All right. Nice. Okay. All right. So those were just some quick fun little questions. Thank you, Tyler, for hanging out with us today. We really appreciate it. Can you tell everyone how they can get in touch with you and check out what you’re doing currently?

Speaker3: [00:20:15] Yeah, well, I.

Tyler Head: [00:20:15] Appreciate you guys having me. It’s super fun. I like to talk to you guys again, but easy way to get in touch with me. My name is Tyler Head with CGI Digital. You can schedule time with me if you’re curious about this. We are working with Cherokee County, so everyone that’s probably listening to this has some sort of interest in Cherokee County calendly.com/cgi Tyler or go to CGI digital.com. It’ll be harder to find me there but you can use the Calendly link that I just gave you to set up time with me. Other than that, I’m always around. Someone’s probably interacting with me that, you know, just ask your friends and we’ll be talking to you soon.

Austyn Guest: [00:20:52] All right. Fantastic. Well, we enjoyed our time with you today, and we know our audience will get so much out of hearing your story. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you on the next one.