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In this episode of ‪What Worked, Tyler interviews Borja Cuan, Co-Founder at Four15 Digital, a digital marketing agency. Borja talks all things agency, including leveraging your network to get your first customers.

Borja shares his insights about:

• Why you should focus on giving value early on
• What a company needs before starting a digital marketing campaign
• Managing the inevitable employee stress

We'd love for you to connect with us:

• Mike Wu
• Tyler Rachal
• Borja Cuan

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Transcript edited for clarity:

Tyler Rachal

Welcome back everybody to another episode of What Worked. I am thrilled to be joined by a fellow agency owner, Borja Cuan from Four15 Digital. Borja, welcome to the show.

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Borja Cuan

Hey Tyler, thanks for having me.

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Tyler Rachal

Absolutely. So as is customary for these things, we always like to kind of give a quick introduction to our audience rather than me doing a poor man's version. I figured I'd turn to the source himself. So if you don't mind introducing who you are, a little bit about Four15 digital, what you guys do, and also just a little bit about how you got started with your agency.

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Borja Cuan

Sure, yeah. So my name is Borja Cuan. I co-founded Four15 Digital about eight years ago. We are a performance marketing agency that specializes in helping businesses scale through digital advertising across different platforms. Specifically, it's Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok. We are on track to manage about $300 million in ad spend in 2026. 

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Tyler Rachal

Wow.

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Borja Cuan

I got started really because I had been in digital marketing for many years. I started my career working for a startup back in 1998. And so I ended up never leaving the space. And so over the course of my career, I worked for three or four companies. And then it was at the last company that I worked for as an employee where I met my current business partner. And then he and I overlapped there for a few years and I left. And after I left, we got together and we sort of decided to start our own agency.

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Tyler Rachal

Very cool. And always, I know you're based in the Bay Area. You mentioned you joined a startup back in ‘98. Have you always been there? And I guess just general remarks as well, I mean, if you started in ‘98, you've seen some really interesting cycles.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

So general remarks on sort of the evolution of startups in general and tech and all that jazz.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, I was born and raised on the other side of the country, the East Coast in Boston, Massachusetts. Went to college in Boston, I went to Boston University. And it was when I graduated from college that I ended up connecting with a recruiter who was helping me find a job. And they had called me and said, hey, we have this position at an internet startup. It was started by two brothers who both went to Harvard and the CEO of the company they brought on board had been successful with a few exits and they raised money. And I said, great, let's give it a shot. So I ended up interviewing at that company and I didn't get the job that I applied for, but they ended up calling my recruiter and saying, hey, we have another position at the same company we think he'd be a good fit for. So I ended up going back and interviewing for that position, getting the job and then ended up there for eight years through a lot of change and transformation. A year after I joined, we went public. So I was part of an IPO offering, which was in itself a unique experience being part of that in ‘99. 

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Tyler Rachal

Sure.

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Borja Cuan

And then shortly after going public also was part of the dot-bomb. So the opposite was happening where a lot of companies that really had no business raising money or being in business, ended up going out of business. And so I was part of that cycle, which obviously was a very challenging time. My company was very stable financially, had been very sort of responsible fiscally. So we withstood that turbulent time, but not without having some impact. For me, as someone very early in my career, I witnessed what it was to be part of a company that went through layoffs. I had never experienced that, so that was actually chilling. I remember coming into the office and people that I was friends with no longer worked there. Yet yesterday I had lunch with them. And as someone who was in their very early 20s, witnessing that and understanding how ruthless business was and how quickly things can change from champagne toast on an IPO to a year later, walking in and people were crying and people have been let go. It was kind of…

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Tyler Rachal

It's somber.

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Borja Cuan

It was for someone, like I said, inexperienced as I was. So, I ended up there for eight years though, the company came back from that. We expanded into other markets. We were growing in terms of people and employees and people and customers. We had acquired our biggest competitor, they merged the brand. So for me, those eight years were transformative personally and professionally. And for me, I also learned a lot about internet marketing and business and ended up being mentored by a lot of very successful experienced people that I, because of my sort of natural curiosity, took a liking to them and asked them if they would be so kind to give me some time and mentor me. And so I learned a lot from them and it ended up being a great professional experience.

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Tyler Rachal

What was the company?

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Borja Cuan

The name of the company was BeFree, B-E-F-R-E-E, and they were the first affiliate marketing technology and services company.

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Tyler Rachal

Cool, the first, that's wild. And it's funny, I chuckled as you mentioned sort of the frivolous sort of spending. I always think about in that dot com burst, I think you said dot bomb. I think the famous one was Webvan. It was like the original Instacart. And I remember, those like really famous office chairs that cost like 2000, 3000 bucks a pop. I think the Eames or something like that.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah. Ames, Ames chairs, yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

Yes, it just goes to show you what little I know about interior design. But I remember they bought something crazy, like they bought like 200 of them, like every employee would have one of these chairs. So they were spending it and it's it's it sounds like your company was doing the opposite was pretty smart about it. But yes, you nailed it. Before founding Hireframe, I was a part of a startup in the call center space. And we were headquartered in Santa Monica. And we went through a couple of different times where we had to do layoffs for the HQ team. And of course, I can't really think of a time where we had to do a ton of layoffs in our delivery centers over in the Philippines, that sort of thing. It was really just layoffs at HQ. But to your point, the thing that comes to mind distinctly is we would do this Monday morning kind of standup meeting where we literally would stand up physically. This is where we were in the office every week. There was no remote work really for our team. And we would do these Monday standups where we would all be in literally a circle. And we would talk about what we're focused on for that week, personal good news, professional good news, whatever it is. I remember that Monday after we did layoffs, it was just really, it felt off. You were just looking around. The circle was a lot tighter. and yeah, there was kind of this feeling. It was like all the feelings, you were thankful that you still had your job. You felt really bad for the people that didn't. And to a certain extent, you were also kind of looking at management and you're like, you took some of ours, it feels a little bit personal too to an extent. So a whole range of emotions. 

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But you're totally right. Business is tough, business is ruthless. So yeah, it's one of those lessons people have to learn. And it's kind of crazy too, because you and I have experienced layoffs in person. Whereas I think a lot of people from this current generation entering the workforce have never experienced the infamous Zoom calls is what they get, the out of the blue calendar invite sort of thing. So yeah, it's interesting.

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Borja Cuan

It was a very different time for sure. I mean, this is obviously back when working from home wasn't something people did. We had remote salespeople from California, their region was California. Atlanta, they lived in Atlanta, but 90 % of our staff was in office. And it was Monday through Friday. And the concept of work from home was not really talked about.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally. Yeah, without a doubt. You also made me chuckle again, because I was thinking about remote sales teams and the infamous sales weekly standups that would happen with those people, and it would be on a conference line. Which is kind of, honestly, work comedy, work bloopers that I kind of miss because everybody does Zoom. But I used to love the bloopers of conference lines. You would have people joining, the little chirp when someone would join, someone would have their thing, be asking someone to mute their phone, please. So yeah, wild times. 

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Well, listen, I'll transition here. We're both agency owners. And one of the things that I love to talk about with other agency owners, and we'll just do it here live and being recorded, is I love to hear about how you got your start with your agency in terms of how you landed your first few customers. Your background is in marketing. So I'm kind of curious to hear how that sort of influenced the way you landed your first few, those precious few logos that helped you get started.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, one of the things we talked about, my business partner and I, before starting the agency was how we would get our first customer, right? Like, who would that be? The benefit we had was we had many years of experience collectively, and over those years, both of us had done a really good job of networking and keeping our network alive. And they talk about the power of the network and I don't think you could talk more about the power of a network more so than when you start a business and how important it is to be able to draw from that network in terms of identifying your first opportunities. So for me, kind of go back to marketing and like how I would think about winning my first piece of business and it was really going back to the people that I had relationships with already who were in positions at organizations and who met our criteria, which by the way, when we first started the business wasn't as specific as it is now. We had an ICP, but that ICP and the criteria we had for that ideal customer profile was much different than it is today. 

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Tyler Rachal

Sure.

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Borja Cuan

So we basically just were like, who can we call that we know is in a position within marketing that needs a growth partner? And because they know us and trust us, they'll give us a shot. And we're not gonna be really focused on how much we charge them. And we're not gonna be really focused on making the language and the contract very rigid. Instead, we wanna get in there and show them our worth, bring them value. And if we do good, which we felt really confident we would, they will become a customer. At that point, we could potentially renegotiate the terms.

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And we knew that that would also be an opportunity for them to refer other business. 

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And so that was our approach and it worked because right away we landed three or four customers from just our existing network. And it was because of those customers that we were able to kind of light some gas under the fire and build a referral business, if you will. That was kind of the start of the referral machine.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally, I wanna highlight a few really powerful things that you just referenced because they ring really true for my experience in building an agency as well as what I kinda preach to a lot of people. I oftentimes talk to people that are thinking about starting some type of service business and I tell them they're oftentimes so focused on things like, how do I scale and do I have the right tools and and how does my deck look and all this sort of stuff. And I stress, ultimately your first customers are going to come from your network, cause at the end of the day, when you're starting a business, you just don't have those things to win business cold. It's very hard to win business cold when you don't have customer references. Especially, you typically need a customer reference that is relevant to their space as well. The track record, the case studies, the social proof, right? And so it has to be someone that already knows you and they're ultimately buying from you. 

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And then the other part that I wanna stress that you mentioned is not really worrying too much about what you charge them. I oftentimes talk to people and they'll kind of be like, well, where do you think I should price my services at? And they're using market comparisons. And I'm like, listen, your number one goal is to get paid to do something. I can't stress the value to that enough. The second that you have someone who is paying you to do a service, congratulations, you are now a business versus before you're just an LLC and anybody can set up an LLC very easily. But once you do have a paying customer, to your point, you're getting, first of all, feedback on your service. You're learning about what people do see value in and what they don't. And more importantly, every customer when you're early on in business represents two, three, four, five, 10 plus potential referrals. And that's really everything. That's how you kind of build that motion. 

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I do want to ask, your marketing background though, as you started to get outside of that first kind of initial batch of customers, was there a point at which you started to advertise for your own business?

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, I do want to say one thing in regards to the prior topic since it is interesting and I think you hit a really important point in there building off of what I said, but I think the motto you should have when you're a business owner is give more than you receive.

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Tyler Rachal

Absolutely.

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Borja Cuan

It's such a powerful thing because we're always giving value, right? Like when you're trying to win business and you're trying to get your first dozen customers, we were just doing a lot of work for free to give people some additional confidence that we were capable, right? Because of all the reasons you said, we're not established, we don't have a track record, can't talk about the big companies we've worked with or how much we've managed. You just have to say, hey, I'm gonna show you through free value that I know what I'm talking about and I can bring a lot of value to your business. And so just that mindset of just not worrying so much about the financials. And yes, the financials are important. Don't get me wrong, I understand that. But at first, your job is to win the business. And when you don't have credibility, so to speak,  you really have to just give, give a lot of value for free and over time people warm up to it because they're seeing that you're focused on the things that matter and not sort of really like distracted by the money, you know?

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Tyler Rachal

Couldn't agree more. And what would add to that is that your pricing power, where that really comes into play is the point at which you have perceived value. Your perceived value is very high versus your the cost of delivering the services to you. So that's a point that I've now learned in business is that you have to get to a place where someone comes to you and they're perceiving, wow, this firm has worked with these companies. They must really be sitting on these incredible best practices. They can get me to my next level. At that point, that's when pricing becomes more of a strategic growth mechanism for your business, where you can start to say, we can really charge for the expertise, the systems we have, the workflows.

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And by perceived value, I don't want to paint the picture that it's not real value. I'm just saying that that's when, for an agency pricing really comes into play is when your perceived value starts to become something that you can really leverage. When you're first starting off though. It's all about what you're saying. It's about just give, give, give. That's how you build rock solid relationships and trust.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, I agree 100%. A lot of people miss that, they get, like I said, too focused on things that are irrelevant at that stage. So yeah, really good commentary by you on that point. So yeah, so I think just to answer your question, the cobbler's children have no shoes, right? We have thought about doing what we do for other clients for ourselves, but it's not something that we've really done. We've done small experimentation at a small scale where we've done a little bit of paid for our agency on LinkedIn. But it hasn't really been something we've really committed to, where we've put enough chips in where I can say there's been enough investment where we have conclusive evidence one way the other. So we haven't really done that for ourselves. We haven't basically gone out and bought keywords on Google or done enough marketing across LinkedIn or Meta for customer acquisition for the agency. Have you done that for yours?

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Tyler Rachal

So I was going to say one of the reasons why I've started what worked is to get free consulting. And so I was actually going to ask you this question, and it's a perfect time. Hireframe just started doing paid ads. And for us, we've grown the business 100% based off of referrals. And that is still the primary driver by a long shot. Why paid ads and why now? I think that what we've experienced is just as a service business, the ability to remain consistent in our growth, I think is going to be reliant on a diversification of channels. Being completely reliant on one channel in any capacity, I think kind of puts you that much more vulnerable to sort of market cycles. We work with, for the most part, venture-backed tech startups. And the tech recession was real. It happened a couple of years ago. Are we still in it? I don't know. But definitely, we experienced it at Hireframe. And so I think a lot of our thought has always been about that. 

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But I'll tell you that the way we think about paid ads, and I don't know if this is good or not, our thought process is more, it's an opportunity to start developing really a group, an audience that we can actively market to versus this idea that we're going to dollar in, get someone to schedule a meeting, and then we're going to sell them. I think that we're thinking a little bit more long-term in that it's an opportunity to get people generally interested in Hireframe, continue to serve them value in other ways, i.e. content, expertise, hopefully the What Worked podcast. And then over time, we find that once there's awareness of what we're doing, people tend to come to us. And they also refer us a good amount of business. I don't know if that's smart or not, but yeah, we're experimenting with it. I hope to get to the same place that you are, and that I hope to come up with some sort of conclusive answer. And I'm trying to be realistic with a timeline, in that I imagine that it'll be about a year, maybe a year plus before I can kind of answer that question for you. So maybe we do a part two.

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Borja Cuan

Follow up.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, I will ask you, you mentioned you work with a range of businesses, small, medium, large. Let's talk though just about the businesses that you work with that are new to paid advertising. What is a, I would love to hear what is a common spiel that you give to them when thinking about ads. Like what is a common, I guess, misconception that they might have? And how do you kind of reframe their thinking around the approach?

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, so this is a business that is not done advertising right before they're coming to us. 

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Tyler Rachal

Correct, it's basically Hireframe.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah. I think the biggest misconception is that you press start and then you walk away and things happen, right? Leads start coming in, sales are generated. There's oftentimes a lack of understanding of really what goes into developing an ultimately sophisticated marketing campaign or campaigns and work that needs to be done in advance before you actually start spending money. So oftentimes people don't have all the basics in place that we would want before we decide to go live, right? I think it's a lot around as a business understanding the metrics like what are the goals for these campaigns, whether it's cost to acquire a customer, cost to acquire a lead, whatever it is for your business, what are the goals that we have, right? And sometimes they don't have it because they've never done it, so they need to run it in order to determine what those goals are, and that's okay. We can come to those over time, right? Because you don't have the data, because you've never sort of tested in digital, that's fine. But having some baseline goal, right? Like what are we trying to accomplish here is important. 

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And then once we have that, it's really like understanding, I think, who your customer is, right? So a lot of times people don't have that clearly defined who are we trying to reach, who is our audience, who's our ideal customer profile, things like that. Really being very clear if you're especially in B2B marketing on who the ICP is something that is very important, yet oftentimes overlooked. Underestimating content needs, like not understanding digital isn't just turning on ads. You need ads refreshed periodically, frequently, you need to constantly have someone there who's looking at the competitors, who's coming up with new ideas, who's identifying the top performing creative and then looking for something to beat that creative or outperform that creative. So it's constant. Landing page optimization, conversion rate optimization, like some of these things that people don't understand as part of making things successful. And then I would always say tracking also, they don't understand in business you can't manage what you can't measure. So we need to make sure that we invest resources to get the right tracking in place for our business. And maybe it starts off pretty basic and evolves to something more sophisticated, but at a minimum we need basic tracking to tell us how things are performing on a channel by channel basis. 

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So like those are some of the ones that come to mind. It's also the website, right? I had a call with a prospect not too long ago and their website looked very outdated compared to their competitors. We knew who their direct competitor was and we did just a side-by-side comparison and we said, here's more modernized, here's more old-fashioned. You don't need to be exactly what they are, but we absolutely need to sort of focus on UX, UI. We have to make this experience better for the customer. We need to be more clear on what the value proposition is, how you're different, what you're solving for. So we're gonna eventually send traffic to a page and that user may end up coming to the website and learning more. So we wanna make sure that it's really in a good place. And by the way, let's not forget, optimize for mobile. So we need to make it responsive because most of your users are on mobile devices. And oftentimes, again, these are things they're not thinking about. So I threw a lot out there, but those are just some of the things that come to mind.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, I think, just as someone who just did this, all the stuff that you say right now, it sounds obvious, but it's something that when you're a business owner or you're an executive and you're doing this for the first time, when you think of ads, I think you think of them very surface level. You think of it just in terms of the ad itself. 

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 I want to transition to your team. I'm an agency owner, as I mentioned, and I think a lot about team building. And of course, that's what we do at Hireframe, we staff out teams. So hiring and developing talent is basically all I think about. I am curious, agencies can be extremely stressful, and it typically never goes away. Actually, the only reason why it would go away is if you don't have customers, which is even more stressful. But how do you think about stress when it comes to your team?

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Borja Cuan

We talk about stress openly and without stigma. So my  mentality around stress and what I share with my team is that there will be stress, right? Inevitably when you're part of a business and by the way, the agency business is a demanding business. Stress is baked into a services business. You're constantly juggling deadlines, client expectations, internal bandwidth, or all these things that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, right? And so inevitably there will be stress in this job and I want them to know that. I want them to be clear on what the expectations are, what the environment will be from time to time. Not to say that we would want this to be a stressful environment every day, Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, but that there will be moments of stress. And so being very open about that I think is important because it sort of prepares someone mentally for what is to come. So then there's just being very open about it. 

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And then also being very clear that that's normal. So this environment is no different than another agency environment. Every agency environment will have stress. Of course, the amount of stress might vary depending on how the leaders of that organization manage their business and manage clients, things like that. But in general, it's not unique to Four15 Digital, right? And so we recognize that and the sooner we embrace it versus resist it, the easier it will be when it comes. And so what I try to do is just prepare people for the inevitable stress that will come into their lives when they're working here and how they can be best prepared to deal with it so that when it comes, they're able to manage it, cope with it. 

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So one thing I say is, if you're stressed, raise your hand, let us know. You're overwhelmed, raise your hand, let us know, make us aware. We can't always read your mind. I wish we could, but we can't. But I can't understand or I can't help you if I am not aware of what the situation is. So when you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, that's okay. Talk to us about it. Let us know what's going on. We'll be able to work with you to try to figure out how do we reduce that stress or eliminate it altogether. Or just kind of just coach you through it. So you get through it and there you go. So we try to tell them that when they have stress, come to us and we'll sort of work through it together. 

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And also I always say it's very, stress will pass. It's a temporary thing, it's not a permanent thing. So like anything, it's gonna go away, right? So understand that. And for us, we try to really have a good pulse on the business and workload of the team so that they don't find themselves in stressful situations. Because oftentimes I've talked to people and when I've really analyzed a situation, I've listened to them actively, I've observed them, I often have found in many cases, not all, but the majority actually, that a lot of that self, that stress is self-created. It doesn't actually exist. So this person has created a situation of stress, not because we have imposed it on them, but because their mind is taking them in a different direction, right?

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Tyler Rachal

Totally. Yeah.

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Borja Cuan

So then we've kind of, we've coached them through and said, hey, by the way, this deadline that you've placed on yourself, we didn't do it. This was self-imposed. And by the way, why did you put this deadline on yourself because you don't need to get this done today. Why don't you just tell the client who put this on you at the last minute that you've already sort of allocated your time for the day and you can't do it today, but guess what? We'll get it done for you tomorrow. So there are ways that we wanna coach people who are going through stressful situations because a lot of times they're very easily fixable. It's typically just time management or client communication, or sometimes it's me involved, getting involved in talking to the client and saying, hey, you're sort of burying this person with a lot of unnecessary work and also putting unreasonable timelines to some of these tasks. We have to sort of work through this together so that it's fair for both sides. So it's sometimes advocating for your team too, because frankly, the client is putting a lot of unnecessary stress on them and they're trying to go above and beyond, but there's a conflict there. So you have to get involved as a leader and really advocate for the team and not compromise your relationship with the client, but say, client, you asked us to get this done by five o'clock and you asked us to do this at three, that's not necessarily a reasonable turnaround time.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, wow, you just and I'm gonna struggle here because there was a bunch of really good stuff there that I wanted to just comment on and double down on because I thought that was really it was jam packed with valuable nuggets. First you mentioned time. This is something that I have personally found when dealing with stress is understanding that time is the end boss, right? It's like a, I'm gonna butcher this, but I think it was in the Lord of the Rings series. 

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Borja Cuan

I won't be able to help you there because I don't read those, but yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

There was a riddle and the essence of the riddle was what is this thing that has the power to literally crumble mountains into sand and basically end entire civilizations. It's this idea that time is the final boss time. Time has us all. We all have whatever it is. So with time, everything literally shall, shall pass. It's impossible. When you think about white knuckling. When you're on a roller coaster ride, there's only so long that you can hold this face. Your body can't hold it. And so eventually, you're going to just release and you're not going to, you whatever. So for me personally, I use that as something that is empowering, because I just like to think that at the end of the day, whatever it is that is giving me stress, it will resolve in some way, either I'll resolve it or it will resolve itself. It might mean that I lose a relationship, a client relationship, it might mean I lose some money. It could mean many different things, but the point is that time is going to be the end dictator of that. And I am but a peon on this rock we call earth and that sort of thing. So it's just kind of like an awareness, a self-awareness of that sort of stuff. 

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And you also talked about, I love this, this is something that we talk a lot about at Hireframe is being a hand raiser, right? We talk about the responsibility of team members. We make it extremely clear, whether this is our internal team or this is the staff that work for our customers, at the end of the day, we hire adults. And adults, we are not mind readers. Adults have to be responsible for yourself at the end of the day. We can give you as much support and resources as we possibly can. Any challenge that you're going through, we can work through it together in some way. But one thing we cannot do is once it's too late, i.e. this sort of thing has exploded in your mind, it's very hard for us to pick up the pieces at that point. 

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So to your point about sort of this thing created in their own mind, I find that is very often the case. As we'll get, for example, Hireframers, our staff that work for customers, where they'll say, hey, I'm working for this customer and it's unfair. I'm burnt out. I'm working so much. I'm going well past the hours that I'm being paid for in my shift. And we'll step in and we'll say, well, did the client ask you to work those hours? No, but they just give me assignments and I have to get the assignments done. No, see there's a skill there that we have to develop. And that is one of setting appropriate expectations. If you are a good communicator and you let people know what your bandwidth is and what they can expect from you. It's incredible. The power that you can kind of take back into your life. And then also into your stress levels, right? there's something freeing. In fact, I love seeing people that become addicted to setting expectations. It's kind of cool. They just are constantly like, just to let you know, I'm like, yes, yes, yes. I'm not expecting it today. I can see that you really enjoy setting expectations and that's awesome. 

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It's something that we talk a lot about at Hireframe. I like what you're referencing is just there's kind of this inevitability about it. And I think removing this stigma. Where I think this current generation is really off is I think there's this sense with the current generation that stress is something to be eliminated when in fact the most incredible things typically come from stressful situations. If you think about anything, like I'm a very big advocate of physical fitness and I really enjoy these HIIT workouts, right? It's not just the body results that you're looking for, it's also the release of dopamine from when you're in an intense situation and your central nervous system is being taxed, that release of dopamine is really good for you. You're doing a lot of good for your body, but it comes from a stressful situation. Can I finish the rep scheme in the appropriate amount of time? Am I going to fail a rep? All these types of things. I think there's this thought around sort of bubble wrapping ourselves as a society - no stress. It's like no actually stress is something that propels you forward.

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Borja Cuan

Yep, I always say to the team, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The sooner you can do that, the better off you will be in your life, both personally and professionally. That's just gonna be part of what awaits you, right? And you talked about setting expectations and communication as being very important and I couldn't agree more. We could spend an hour talking about communication as a skillset and how I believe that to be the single most important skillset that I look for in a person when I'm interviewing them is their ability to communicate because I do believe it makes a difference between a good and a bad relationship. Like you were just describing, how do you sort of get out of that deadline? Well, it's how did you communicate the reason for wanting an extension to that deadline? Like what is your reason, right? Is it I just procrastinated or is it, hey, I just need a little more time because I researched this topic and I'm getting more deep into it and it seems like I need to do a little more sort of information gathering. There's a lot of different ways to say it, but not every way is going to accomplish the goal that you have. So it is a very much a skill set.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally.

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Borja Cuan

And like you said, just the mental and physical benefits you get from HIIT training is just a good example of how I always have realized that the best things that I've realized in my life have been through pain, suffering, discomfort. It's just like that's how it works. Whether it's a cold plunge or getting on the assault bike or just dealing with a business transaction that is very difficult. I've come out of it learning a lot about myself, having felt good about it, maybe not always the outcome, but that I was able to face it on and deal with it versus run from it. So I think, yes, and by the way, you and I aren't saying you should live in a, you should live in a life of constant stress because that would be taxing and it would make you grow old very quickly. But it's like you have to have stress in your life periodically. You have to have discomfort because it's, as you said, through those experiences that you learn the most about yourself.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, life is, is a one big dish, right? And you got to have some seasoning. So it's like, Hey, it can't all be smiles and rainbows all the time. Otherwise to your point, how would you appreciate those good times? You gotta have a point of comparison. In fact, I always look at people who I think come from conceivably a very very privileged background and I actually always look at them I think man that's a bummer. You will never know the thrill of buying your first car because you were given a car. I bought my first car, that that feeling of driving it off of the used car lot, It was like I was king of the world and that came from you know, literally I was working at the Melting Pot slinging cheese fondue. I don't know how many cheese fondues to get this vehicle. It's a certain feeling. 

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I do want to kind of round things out here. We've covered a bunch of stuff and I feel like we're at a great natural high point. If someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best channel for you and what do you want someone to reach out to you for besides the obvious, Four15 Digital's services.

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Borja Cuan

Yeah, mean, I think people can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I share a lot of my thinking on marketing, leadership, and growth. I write articles from time to time, mostly it’s just therapeutic for me. I enjoy writing about different topics related to business and entrepreneurship. Every time I'm sort of alone or doing something and I think of something, I just put it in Evernote and then I end up writing about it. So LinkedIn is definitely somewhere where you can find me.

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If you're a brand looking to scale through paid media or performance marketing, that's what my agency Four15 Digital is all about. So you can go to our website, Four15digital.com, learn more about the services we offer, some great client success stories, learn about our culture if you're an interested potential employee. And we have a contact us form and what we do for pretty much any prospect who's interested in working with us, assuming it's the right fit, we'll do a free audit of your business. And so we'll take a look at all the campaigns you have and kind of based on math and experience give you our sort of take on it. So feel free to reach out to us if you're interested.

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Tyler Rachal

Free consulting, everybody. That's why I started What Worked. Take Borja up on that. It's been an absolute pleasure having you here on What Worked. I do encourage anyone who's interested to check out Four15. And if you are listening to this and you think that you could be a good guess for What Worked or you know somebody that should be on What Worked, the cool thing is I've been saying this consistently on episodes, and I now get probably every single week three or four inbounds from really cool potential guests. Borja, you were one of them. I don't know if that actually was from you or someone on your team. But yeah, if you're out there and you're listening, see, this is a proof in point that if you reach out to me, there's a good chance you might end up on here. Thank you, everybody. We'll catch you on the next episode of What Worked. Borja, thank you so much for your time and wisdom.

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Borja Cuan

Thank you, Tyler.

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