Digi-sign Beach Party Invitation Made Easy

Digi sign beach party invitation

she looks at me i have like a teardrop she's like you're crying because of this sign and i'm like yeah but at the end you know like in my head i was really crying because i knew at that moment that my life was going to completely change i wrote yeah hi my name is frank and i was a 32 year old interest [Music] hello brazil hello world my name is marcelo i'm a creative copywriter here in the us and in today's episode of publicity nagringa i'm going to talk with frank garcia a panamanian who currently works as senior creative at gut miami frank is not only an amazing creator but he also has an incredible story of giving up on a very well established career as the vice president of marketing of a bank in panama to come to the us get back to square zero and start working as an intern at the age of 32 to finally fulfill his dream of becoming a creative in the us chatting with frank was extremely insightful extremely inspiring so if you want to change career if you want to work abroad or you just want to know a little bit more about advertising this video is for you but well guess i already talked a lot let's hear what frank has to tell us frank thank you so so much for your time here such a pleasure to have you here in the channel i've been talking with like a lot of peop brazilians but then i started talking with americans egyptians and now i have a panamanian here to talk with me and so so interesting to know a little bit more about your story so thank you so so much for being well thank you marcelo for having me yeah and i i think about the panamanian thing is there's not a lot of us in advertising um outside i can you know outside of panama so i can think you know on top of my head the other one i mean it would be alex allen that also works with me yeah and it's good to show like to people from your country that it's possible and like to have someone to look for so before we jump into your story and i know from what i've already read about you that is a really nice story can we just talk about the fact that you were a copywriter from panama partnering with an art director from italy in an agency in the us founded by a brazilian in an argentinian and yesterday i found out that you had an egyptian intern so really very ex like extremely multicultural team multinational team so for you what are the benefits and the challenges of having a team that has people from all over the world well the benefits uh i'm just gonna say on top of my head i think is that whenever you get a brief and you have such a you know like a diverse team with like everyone grew up in a different place you know watching something different on tv listening to different music listening to different jokes as they walk you know like on the streets of their countries so whenever you get that brief in front of you you're not going to get the same answer from every team every team is going to bring something completely different to table and i love that how you know like different heads solve the same problem in different ways just based on what we already have inside of our heads and what we have inside of our heads comes from nurture you know like what we learned seeing so that for me is a huge benefit um if i have to take to think about you know like the cons even though there's not a con you know like i don't really see it as a con i think that that sometimes you know like as you're explaining an idea um you have to give a little bit of context because we all believe that you know like these insights that we have embedded in our heads everybody knows them and maybe we're like saying yeah you know like because i i you know i grew up watching you know like 90s mtv commercials and there might be someone in the room that maybe it's you know like a little bit younger and they're like i don't know i don't know this reference you know like i think if we always give a little bit of context on the references on the insights even when we're doing a case study you know because that judge in italy you know um or that korean judge may not be familiar you know with like popeyes and chick-fil-a's rivalry you know so so i think working in a diverse team trains you to understand that context is key for everything you do because sometimes we take for granted and we believe that people are going to understand everything but they grew up with like a maybe a very different upgrade upbringing than i did so yeah no i totally agree with that uh so i actually came two situations to my mind one is when i started working here in the u.s and there are so many internal american jokes that people are saying like i totally don't get the reference at first so like what are you guys saying and another time was when i was talking with a friend that is like a bit younger and i was talking about the time when we had to dial into the internet and she was what's that like because so it's very i guess context is very key on this no i i was just saying you know like the thing that you said about the the american you know like jokes i remember sitting at droga in a room and you know like people's just joking and misjust sitting there not understanding anything but getting just like the hell what they're talking about you know like i don't know all these things but i have to laugh if not i'm gonna be fired yeah that's true yeah i remember especially like when i started with like american football jokes you know like oh i'm in third down like what the hell are you talking about yeah no and i don't follow sports i mean like i'm wearing an la hat for the dodgers i don't even like baseball i like la as a cd so um right like when they start talking about you know like like like football or like that happens to me even in latin america when people start talking about you know like soccer and i'm just like i play music you know yeah i mean i i i do skateboarding i that's that's the closest that i can call a sport yeah yeah yeah which i guess is it's a good parallel that i mean when you're in a different country it it's bigger but that happens in any situation in life right people have different experiences and i guess that's what's beautiful of our industry to have people from different experiences i think that agencies should reflect the population you know because the population itself is not 100 american you know like this is a country based on you know diversity immigration and all these things so when you're talking to to that market you know like you're not just talking to people who are born and raised in texas you're also talking to you know like maybe i don't know you know someone from salvador who moved to you know like to new orleans you know and they're a part of that mass so so so i think you know like always keeping that in mind again context when explaining things just being very clear of on why we're doing the things we're doing and making those insights extremely clear for people to get them even if they don't get the reference you're explaining yeah actually this is very true like you will hear a lot of english of course but i hear so much spanish chinese portuguese when you're walking in the us so you have super mutable and that's in new york here in miami like uh i remember like the other time like for for uh new year's there were a lot of americans like that came here like because of you know miami's a warm city and the weather was nice and i'm guessing they wanted to spend uh new year's outdoors yeah at some point i asked a friend of mine why are there so many americans in miami yes she's like i'm hearing a lot of english and you know like that's it's not something you're really used to you know like on the streets of miami even though i've got of course we work we work in english but um so now entering on your experience your how do you land at a job here in the us uh different from a lot of people that like they just okay i want to since the beginning to work with creativity i want to work in advertising you when you decided to work with this when you decided to come to to miami you were in a very nice job uh in a bank in panama so what motivated you to leave your job in marketing come to the us to study advertising and if i may add another layer have you considered changing careers but stay in panama or was like okay i'm changing careers i'm also changing country i want to do the whole package how was that decision i actually love talking about these because it was a at the moment you know when that was happening inside of my head i was just like oh my god what am i doing i remember um i was a vp for for hsbc panama you know huge bank um and one day i just walked into you know like like the ceo's office and i told him hey man um i don't want to lose anymore you know like i want to be a banker let me let me backtrack a little bit where does that come from you know i'm talking about mtv again you know i grew up watching very stupid dumb commercials you know like from like 90s mtv back back in the days when tv used to actually play music um you know i grew up listening to to a lot of like punk music and because of punk music like like it had a very dumb sense of humor so i grew up with with that you know like very stupid jokes um all of those like tom green movies from the 90s you know i'm a 90s i was born in 81 so you know like 90s for me where my era um so i grew up to that and i remember i was just like i want to do those things those stupid apps that i used to watch on tv um and suddenly i went to college and i started creative writing from when i went back home to panama in panama there's really not that clear division at least there wasn't at the time um of you know like copywriter art director so so when i graduate as a writer you know like he was almost like yeah but write it go and write a fiction book you know like go and write the next tom sawyer you huckleberry finn and i was just like um and and then i uh my dad who was a banker was like why don't you start also applying to the banks and i'm like what do you mean applying to events you know like i wanted to work in advertising and he was like yeah but it's not happening then i applied to lance and oddly a bank hired me with a creative writing degree but not an advertising agency and probably that was probably that was the best thing that could have ever happened in my life because if not i would have stayed in panama in advertising from day one so i joined banking you know i was i didn't know anything about banking so i started questioning everything and because of questioning everything i started changing everything little by little and in like seven years i was already a senior vp very comfortable you know like really good salary but i hated what i was doing you know i mean like i didn't like it i was in charge of a lot of branches from the bank but i didn't like it at all um so i remember my head started you know my wheels started spinning i want to do advertising a little advertising one of the advertising and i started googling and i found this place called miami at school online i was just like okay um i'm gonna do this one day one day one day one day until one day you know i went to the office and that was the day that i told my boss hey man um i want to go back to that moment when i said marketing advertising potato potato um it's not potato potato it's very different you know i wanted to look totally crazy at some point i was even the vp of marketing for a bank back home and i used to be a pain in the ass because i used to talk to the to the advertising agency and i was a client that client who came with ideas so at that point i was like you know it makes sense for me to just start from scratch again um and uh and i remember you know this is another part of the story that i quit and i i'm going back to your question did i ever try it in panama yes i did when i quit banking i tried doing my own thing but um like freelancing but but i needed to be educated you know i needed to to learn new things so um i applied to miami at school and and at the same time i remember i had a girlfriend and she was like because i i received another offer from panama to become a vp of marketing for aig an insurance company my girlfriend at the time was like dude you're old you know i was 31. she was like i know you want to live this hipster dream of you know like helvetica and you know like in these things i was obsessed with helvetica i was like oh manika's a great typography um but uh it's a typeface but um i remember i applied i got the job at aig i didn't take it and at the same weekend i got my my letter of acceptance from miami ad school and i told this girl can you please come with me to miami at school i want to take a look at what i'm saying now too and i came and it was closed it was on a weekend we came for the weekend and outside of the school there was a sign that said though shall not do boring advertising um and dude at that moment i just stood in front of the sign and my ex-girlfriend you know like she looks at me i have like a teardrop she's like you're crying because of this sign and i'm like yeah but at the end you know like in my head i was really crying because i knew at that moment that my life was gonna completely change yes i'm an only child you know like it's me and at the moment two schnauzers and my parents and at that moment i knew you know that i was i was leaving my country and i didn't know when i was gonna be back because my life was going to be outside of panel i actually as you were saying that you were crying i'm actually getting the chills especially especially because like i i also had i also changed career so i was also in marketing but i mean in a more conf way more comfortable situation than you because you were already like in the top i was like a marketing manager like four or five years so it was a little bit easier but like the fact of moving for another country like yeah and another thing that i didn't mention that it's very interesting is like how sometimes people will say to you things that they think they're helping you yeah but you're the only person that knows what ex what really matters and what's important for you right so sometimes you need to just forget what people are saying and like go with with your heart right you know how many times i heard you know like you're an idiot you know like like base you're doing great in life i'm like i'm not what are you talking about what does doing great in life means if you're not doing what you love doing you know like that that doesn't mean great you know like um for me money or things like that are nothing but a consequence of you know doing the work you you do the work love love all of those things will come but the most important thing is happiness you know like um so yeah man and and throughout my career you know even in advertising you know going back to those voices i tell you you know like no don't do that no don't do that it always happens man um so because it happened to us you know i met my partner um in miami at school julia at the moment we were both i mean like i went to miami as well as an art director okay yeah because i remember when i was telling my parents i'm going to go back to school and there were two titles copy writer um and art director i chose art director just because it had the word director looks better for your parents right yeah so my mom was like yeah like what does your son does you know he directs art sound makes me sound you know like like some like guggenheim you know so yeah i met julia um and julia had a writing background but she was an art director and i and i loved writing and i was an art director so i was just like i think this is going to work out because in our partnership throughout our entire career you know it's it's not like i'm the art director you are the copywriter of course i am the copywriter now she's the art director but you know we i i want her to take a look at everything and destroy my copy and i am very opinionated about the r2 just being you know like this sucks not with those words of course always we like positive you know criticism but you're not very honest you know like we think we can do better you know like with these these things and yeah but that's also very interesting how like okay we we divide right so one person will go to the computer and write the other will open photoshop but when it's creating that before going to the tie to the keyboard there is this exchange that i i agree it's very important going back a little bit so you said you received the acceptance letter you came to to the us to see how it was can you tell a little bit how was the process of getting accepted and also the process of getting a student visa how easy or how hard was the whole process um the acceptance i remember it was a brief um and they asked you know like to i had to write a couple of you know like create pieces a creative essay a bunch of different things that explain why i wanted to join school and i had to like show some references you know like of my creative vision and whatever and i wrote the script and now i don't even want to read it because because tomorrow was good enough was good enough for the title i don't know i don't know but the things you know it's funny because you do have the ideas you just don't know how to write a script because there's a format to writing a script and sometimes you know when you're starting you're all over the place and you know when you look at the thing you're like that's it's a paragraph that's not a script you know yeah so now that simplifies everything even you know like as a writer when you watch a show you can easily imagine the script but yeah you're like where do i even start how do you do those things you know so so yeah so for that process of acceptance you know like i i sent all my submission i think it took them like like a month to get back to me and i received that letter saying that you know that i was accepted for me that was the happiest day of my life um [Music] so excited about all the possibilities so nervous about also all the possibilities because you're yes i have no idea i'm going to leave the miami i knew and the school by then was it was at the beach in the miami that you know miami beach that i knew for me my head was a very chaotic you know like party driven town and she's like i'm gonna go there and i want to focus just you know like in doing that of course i'm to go out on those things too because i believe those things also help you you know to come up with ideas but but i was nervous to be honest all services of changing a life um then i you know like you apply for the visa but the application for that visa is is very simple compared to the next visa application that i have in face i will talk about that one of course because you come here and you're like okay you know in your head that you're coming here with one goal stay you know you're gonna take these classes to build a portfolio to get a job in the basement how are you going to do that i have no idea but we'll get there you know and we did it yes yeah so when you arrive in the u.s what what what for you was the biggest challenge to be honest um i was so excited i felt like a kid who was in like disney world for the first time for the first time i was just like okay um i'm doing what i love surrounded by people who love what they do i remember walking in the hallways of miami at school and just people you know like discussing ideas and i was just like holy you know this is amazing i think the biggest challenge and this is a mental thing 100 um was when everybody was introducing themselves and they were like hey my name is blah blah and i'm 22 years old and i was just like i wish everyone was like i'm 22 i'm 23 i'm 24 and i'm just like and i'm 32. you know and then when you start becoming an intern i wrote a post on linkedin about this the other day um that was just i wrote yeah hi my name is frank and i was a 32 year old intern i was older i was like 10 years older than the the juniors older than mid levels i was probably about the age of my you know my ecd's i'm still older than my ecd's you know like i'm younger than myself i guess i don't know someone looks like a very young man but um but um so so you know like but that's only a barrier if you allow it to be dude i'm a 16 year old idiot inside of my head and i will always so i will always be that guy so you know like you throughout advertising you're always going to have these voices you know i tell you no you can't do that oh my god no you know that idea is too don't don't do this don't do this sometimes you're not external sometimes you're gonna be internal and i think it's you just have to say you know off tomorrow exactly and just keep going if you have a goal and the goal is just as long as your goal is ideas i think you'll be fine you know like a lot of people center you know like focus on i want to become a you know like an ecd i think that's the wrong focus you should focus always on the idea and the idea is going to do all of that for you you know yeah i want to win a lion no that's not so that's not tangible you need to say i want to come up with an idea so it's always the idea and what what i think that you mentioned that for me is key is what you're saying about the importance of ideas versus like oh i want a job title and visa because especially on our industry the our award-winning idea can come from an intern can come from a junior copywriter so i think it's a it's an industry and it's a job that doesn't have this this barriers of like oh you're not a cco so you can't have good ideas it's not how it works and whatever you live before just helps you right even if you do it in advertising and i actually have a have a very interesting probably a little bit controversial view about seniority because sometimes you know like when you go to some places you will hear the you know the words yeah but they're not senior enough you know like they're not senior enough and in my head i'm like dude let's stop the car here okay why why are we talking about experience in an industry in which we're trying every day to do things that haven't been done before every time that you come up with an idea that hasn't been done before there is zero experience about what you're about to do so you know like i understand experience is important for you know like client relationships understanding how to you know like persuade a client into saying yes you know like and those conversations but you know like i think i think we need this industry needs to chill a little bit on you know like a lot of like ego that it has and just go back to you know like having fun the ideas you know like if you're writing a funny script you know like make people laugh you know like if you're writing you know like an emotional script make people cry but you know like instead of there's a lot of conversations in this in this industry that maybe if we could just focus and channel more the energy on the work that would be amazing hey guys quick break here just to remind you that we have new videos every monday and friday so if you want to come to the us or to any other place around the globe don't forget to subscribe so you receive a notification every time we have a new video okay well let's get back to the interview you kind of already teased a little bit this next question but at what point you decided okay i want to stay in the us for good after graduation and which steps you took in order to achieve that because of course it's not like oh i finish miami i have a job i have a visa i don't know so what how was that process and when you decided to start doing all the things that were needed to from day one that before joining miami and school the moment that i saw that sign though shall not do boring advertising i may have not accepted it you know like like verbally but i knew that i wanted to stay here i think you know like that's that's your goal and then at that moment you're like i'm just gonna keep my eyes and my ears open you know like to understand because to be honest it's not crazy a lot of people before me did it a lot of people after me did it so a lot of people do it um so she's like let me keep my eyes open um and i started seeing there were two dudes um wesley tater and his partner that were in miami at school with me and those guys were winning every single award show and at that moment i had zero words and i i didn't even know for me like winning an award was like no you have to be a genius to win an award you know like only genius is we know words but i was just like i want to do that you know and then i heard that there was this one visa thing yeah because of that um julia and i started um we we realized that we needed awards and we needed publications yeah so in order to come up with more than the awards the publications you know like the how to get on you know like on ads of the world and things like this you know like because that helps for your visa case i remember we used to write the subject the email subject you know like for them something catchy for them to take a look at and that moment was our biggest piece of education in advertising because we still do that what's the headline what's the headline for the idea was what was my email subject as a student so you know like today we still do it what is the new york times gonna say about this idea back then it was just you know like what is you know um talking out of the world or another page called hello creatives or you know like even creativity online you know how do you get the editor interested in your idea but that also taught us something very important if you can't explain your idea in a sentence your idea has a lot of fat or it's not clear or it's not sharp enough so you know for us that was you know that process of getting our visa was was the biggest education that we could have ever received you know and that was most self-teaching ourselves you know like like those things when we were talking about all one you need to show to the government that like your extraordinary abilities person but you're still in school in the end so like you need to show like still without real work so i think it's a very interesting challenge yeah it also means that you need to do work that when you're doing that case study you know it needs to look real it needs to be like if you're gonna do a night project this should look as if nike did it and we had a lot of trouble sometimes with that because you know like brands were contacting those like we haven't done these you know we're like so sorry wow we were super excited because we're like this brand is mad at us and i remember you're getting relevant right like people are knowing that in some way it's better that they in some sort of way they they got to your job otherwise it will just be in your portfolio no one would be talking about it it's actually great i remember i remember like there was this we did a project like for a it was like an uh like a like a project to you know help people with anorexia and uh i remember that it was a partnership between a hospital um and and canon um 3d printers we did this project and we uploaded it to to award shows and we had it on youtube and suddenly you know the school calls us and they tell us um frank julia the the actual client the real client you know wants you to take it down and at that moment we're going to take it down and i told julia unless she was like what are you saying unless i'm like unless we talk to him he's like let's try it and i'm like guys we can surely take it down um but if we take it down i think we're doing you know like something you know like i think you're gonna lose an opportunity they were like what do you mean because our project was the video that spoke about their brand that had the most amount of views so like i'm like yeah if you want it i can't take it down but we convinced them of what if we just add you know below a disclaimer that said this is student spec work and it's not you know like approved or blessed by blah blah blah and they agreed because i was just like i can take it down and they called us and they told us don't take it down just add that that's amazing wow that's really cool so uh so then you started all this process of getting uh publications getting awards uh but how you ended up landing your first job in america i graduated i graduated a couple of months before julian because she was choosing a quarter below me two quarters below me um and i remember like i was like this is it um i want to start applying for um and my first job you know at the moment i didn't know anything about was the difference between a droga5 a white and kennedy or even a pharmaceutical agency so i got an offer from a pharmaceutical ad agency and i remember that the the only thing that i used to say about them is like oh it's the place where andy warhol used to work andy warhol used to work for these agencies so i got an offer from them and i remember that weekend that i got the offer i i went to the mall and i bought you know nice clothing to start on monday and then they called me hey man um we thought you had a no one visa what do you have is an opt so we can't hire you wow at the moment that was my first punch in the face and i was just like ouch that hurts you know like in that moment you know like because throughout your career there's gonna be a lot of people punching you and a lot of not just people but you know like life is gonna throw a bunch of jabs at you and sometimes you're gonna question the decision that decision you make about quitting everything you need to forget that and just being you know like whatever it is i'm gonna make it i don't know what the hell is gonna be you know i don't know um actually i have this here and not on purpose but always recommend this book if you guys haven't read the secret yeah it's amazing i didn't i didn't knew i didn't know this back then i know it now but back then i was applying those principles you know it's just like i'm gonna get that job i'm gonna get that job and and i remember there were a lot of notes a lot no no no no no even when julia graduated you know like a lot of no no no no from people and the main constant was your book is too weird your book is too weird your book is too weird your book is too weird i remember um talking to julia and and you know like asking ourselves people are saying our book is too weird um she was like should we tone it down a little bit i was just like no let's make it weird and um that's all we did went all in in making it weirder and we started you know like winning awards awards awards towards words and we got our visa we you know like we you know we got our visa like the freelance visa the 01 freelance visa before an agency sponsored why because it was very smart just to go into into an interview and when they ask you about that you're applying for junior position so you know like agencies are not looking to sponsor a junior mainly because they think juniors do not qualify for it and and lawyers from companies are going to tell you no you don't qualify for it even if you do so i wanted to not have that conversation by just being like hey guys no here's my visa i have it yes and then you just transfer it to the agency that's what we did um okay but but the funny thing is like we received a lot of notes everyone in my class started getting jobs and i was the only one who was not getting it so you know anxiety levels rising but we didn't give up man we just we could have easily uh sell out and just change our style of advertising but instead i think we were looking at the wrong places and i'm not saying wrong by saying that these places there's anything wrong with these places they were just not right for me yeah by that time what they did was not the type of work that i wanted to do and suddenly you know like when we landed you know like a droga they were like yeah we want to hire you and dude that was the second happiest day of my life i remember julian is amazing we're coming we went from like not getting any job offers to like in one day get four job offers we were standing in the at the cafeteria of sachi coming out because they offered us work and we're standing at the cafeteria at the at the lobbyists actually in sachin new york and we just got a job offer we're like oh this is nice we're probably gonna go to sachi whatever and at that moment julia goes to the bathroom and i received an email when julia comes back again you know watery eyes she's like what i'm like i don't think we're taking satie i mean like i love them and everything but she's like why i'm like because we're taking drug offerings she's like what that's amazing wow and that was and that was the beginning of our career we've been always very lucky of just being like from then we understood that life is not about you know like going with whatever you know the flow brings you you need to think i want to do that you know like and just channel that energy and you know if and if it makes sense it's not something crazy it's not like i'm going to wake up tomorrow and say you know i want to be the next busa in bolt i don't know how to run properly but if you know if you if you're aligned the type of work that you want to do with the type of place you want to be at you know and you just very persistence man it's just you know like bum bum every day and and and yeah it's it's a crazy crazy journey but i've loved every single moment of my career even the low moments because those low moments make you make you stronger creative you know like they built you know like build a lot of you know like of who you are as a creative and as a person yeah and what is said is so so interesting because i see a lot of people that are starting like just getting out of school like hearing a lot of feedback and of course you need to hear it and at that but some feedbacks if it's not your style it just doesn't make any sense what you're saying like because sometimes oh you need more headlines but i'm not a headline guy i don't know what i like i want to do like crazy stuff and that's why people should hire you and i'm assuming and this is the next question what do you think that convinced droga to want to hire you too i think two things um i think that we were already doing headline driven work and by headlining work i don't mean you know like like copy with headlines i mean you know like pr driven work you know like yeah we were like and massable could say something like this because that that's you know that comes from you know like uh you know like christian poor back in the day like old school you know like not all school but you know like for me that was actually musical you know yeah the actual what's the headline you know for everything you do and we're already thinking like that because of the visa so they were like you guys are going to be a great fit and we're not trying to do 360 campaigns i hate 360 campaigns you know um for me i like what i like i like one-offs you know i like one-offs i'm going all in if it's on strategy if it's on brand you know just do a bunch of things that always you know like hit what the brand stands for instead of just you know like doing an entire campaign of things that nobody's gonna care about yeah so i like even if it's a film it's one you go in you go out you know like this is the headline and everything doing pr driven work we like things that you're like oh i haven't seen that before you know like and even though of course you have to deliver with craft you have your people who are you know like the art director or director the writer writer you know like we're not that we're not those guys everything we do needs to have the right our direction and the right words and the right copy and i love writing and i mostly love writing comedy but one thing that drives us crazy is just every day coming up with something that haven't been done before it because you're talking always as and i think this is amazing about always talking about you and julia as a team can you talk a little bit more of like how you guys met and how you decide okay this is an amazing match and if the fact that you two were foreigners had anything to do with this decision or not yeah i think i think you know julia and i just clicked right away i think that was like nine years ago um we just clicked right away um and we started working we started hanging out i think for me the two things are very important you know like i couldn't have a partner that's just my professional partner because i'm gonna be calling you over the weekend with an idea you know um because it's easier if you're both at the same bar to be like hey what if we do this thing you know like so i loved working with with someone that was so that is so close to me in my life you know um someone that whenever you're stressed suddenly someone knocks at your house and it's you know like your favorite restaurant with your favorite steak you know for me those all of those things are crucial in your career always having each other's backs you know like life is gonna throw a lot of curves you know you need someone you know both of you to be you know like this uh back to back so um so and the fact that she was foreign yes of course because even when we were in new york you know working at droga and we saw ricardo cassala javier pena doing uh google home of the whooper and we sent them a linkedin message telling them uh guys we want to work for you um at the point where they were david you know and we ended here at got um if julia would have been american maybe she would have a dice you know like with her family and things like this we're like we can move whatever we want because we're already not from here so you know like we can go just whatever you know we're gonna be allowed to do great yeah yeah and and i guess it's also like you guys need like to qualify for the same thing so like you need to continue doing great work so you can continue having like the visas the intervention or whatever comes next but uh some of those things so uh so you you guys worked in droga5 uh so you're doing a lot of great work how the how the invitation to join well you kind of teased that you sent the email for that but how that appeared and what was the there was is there was there any bureaucracy of transferring or renewing the visa or no that was pc yeah that was easy that was actually at that time it was that was our fourth visa because you know we knew it as as we were a drug so you know like transferring to god was our fourth one but uh the biggest problem was in the visa not a problem the biggest challenge here was you're very comfortable in uh amazing agency you already built relationships with this dude called david droga that we used to bring him proactive ideas you know like again when we told our friends guys we're gonna quit yoga to go to this place that has we don't god were five people you know so saying that people like you're an idiot and every time you hear that you're like i'm doing the right thing because if the decision makes a hundred percent sense probably is you know like it's something that there's no challenge in it you know like i i like that you know i i like i like the the uncertainty of you know like going to a new place that at the moment had zero awards nothing you know and it was just a dream but what a dream to work you know with like directly with ensemble one thing that that you said and i think it's interesting is like for the brazilian people that are watching us it might sound weird that like how people didn't was not excited about guts because for us was like oh my god and sam is building another thing but yeah yeah a lot of people that in the us at first was like oh it's just a new agency we don't know that much about it so how how was this challenge you think like how people saw guts at first in europe the thing is you know like the new york market is you work in new york you know it's very you have you know back then you know like it was the game was droga um there were other agencies that always had you know like cool names you know like even though their names were always you know like there was anomaly you know like mother those names were like cool you know like like there was like a mystery surrounding all of those agencies like the how do you get into into a drug of five how do you get into a white and getting a lot of these things but at the moment you know um we just saw all the work that you know like they they were doing first of all from you know like dove beauty sketches to you know like man boobs past the hinds you know like all bk but especially it was the walker that when we watched that julia and i were like holy folk i've never seen something like this in my life like these guys just did a knot that triggered and i'm like this is crazy um and then when we started looking at who was doing all of these we're like oh it's the same people that did all of these things and we're like okay we're going back to miami you know we're gonna go back to miami and and funnily enough you know one thing led to the other and we ended up you know like joining and selmo you know here um i remember the process of interview he asked us one question and we were not trying to sound crazy or cool or anything this question this where we responded was you know like what we actually really felt and believe he was like what if why what do you guys want to do and we told him we want to present you ideas that could get us fired and to be honest we were not trying to impress him or anything that was just you know because i remember we were presenting some ideas before that people told us no we can't put 200 you're going to get fired i'm like okay but i love that idea and i want to be presenting more of these type of things so if taco gets me fired you know like it's higher you know like i think we have to be a little bit less scared and just you know like go for the things and do like if you get fired so what you're gonna get another job you know like but if you happen to make that idea that might change your career so getting more on like now that you are already like you have like you've already had like four different visas in the u.s you're ready like have your career like you can say okay i'm a creative they're doing great stuff uh what do you think in retrospective are the were the benefits and the challenges of having a previous experience on the client side for me actually um understanding that clients are a business they are even though you know we want to win grand prix with their you know like by coming up with ideas for them um for me if the idea doesn't really do anything for the business for the client um it generates a lot of pr but it doesn't really you know like moves the needle you know like what are we doing that's is that advertising or is that just art because at the end of the day for me advertising you know needs to drive results and results do not necessarily need to mean um hopefully sales but it depends on what's the objective of the campaign um so we love doing ideas that actually you know like drive sales for example the papa is chicken sandwich yeah i was really gonna reference that that's saturday yeah thinking of course in the mid long term if in case you leave the us do you see yourself going back to panama or exploring different countries i'm cool with exploring different countries but i i cannot lie dude i have this dream of one day going back to my country and starting my own shop not um starting my own shop with and not just let's do panamanian advertising no i mean like panama for me it's a country that you know like geographically it's it's in the center of all latin america we have the panama canal that connects the entire world you know like it's a daughterized economy we have every single big you know like company that you have in the world you know a lot of them actually have you know offices in panama like they're actually like they say yeah i was gonna say that yes for latin america you know a lot of you know like you have like proctor and gamble and things like that they're based in panama for all latin america so whenever i go you know there um years down the line i wanna i wanna attack those companies and i want to do you know award-winning work coming out from my country and and the same you know the same goal you know it's like we need to generate headlines and my headlines i i'm not only talking about you know like the local um the local newspapers but i'm talking about you know like great ideas for example you know like the palau project you know like that generated world headlines so you know i don't think whatever you're seeing um needs to you know like like bring down the you know like the size of your ambition yeah it's it's it's funny that you mentioned that that's such a good idea and insight that i'm surprised that no one has done yet because i used to work for png and i used to work on the panama headquarters oh you were there yeah yeah yes yes uh and was i mean at the same time we we used to work with agencies from like from mexico from brazil and like png is like a huge opportunity for any is for any agency like a lot of amazing like old spies gillette like there's so many opportunities on that yeah and you know like the moment that i do that i want to do what exactly mimicking you know like what's being done here i want you know like miami ad school interns you know like all of those things how you build an agency you know and and and a lot of people back home are just you know like no dude yes but lions you know let's let's talk can let's talk you know cleo let's talk one show you know let's talk dnad you know like because you know panama is a great country and uh yeah we're small but you know i think we can dream big yeah definitely yeah and i i think like nowadays we can see a lot of like it's even easier like to make relevance because of like everything being connected and like one thing that hits the internet that becomes a new meme and bam like you're already super relevant on that and dude panama is closer to miami than new york so if a client you know like um clients are everywhere you know so even you know like clients here in the us you know like you can totally target them you know from an agency panama that's just two hours and 20 minutes away from miami it's it's you know the flight is nothing so and because we're already talking about panama uh what you miss most from your home country my family the food even though the food here in miami it's uh you know like i eat cuban food a lot and cuban food is very similar to mine but i i miss like panamanian breakfast you know there's something called cari manolas that was like yuka outside and it had steak inside that was amazing i miss my drum set because um i play bar i i play guitar but i i play drums too so and you know like i guess i'm not gonna have a drum set in the u.s until i'm an ece or something like that because you need a big house so so i guess that's why i want to become an ecd someday to be able to have a drum set if i was going to answer the next question i would say just listen to this whole interview okay but what's your advice for people who want to work abroad trust yourself and whenever you have to you know you're gonna have life is always gonna give you two choices um always choose the one that scares the out of you you know like if it doesn't scare you you shouldn't do it and also sometimes you know like um life is gonna throw a lot of things at you don't take them if they don't feel right you know like you you know in your head um [Music] you know at the moment that i have to explain people yeah it's the agency that where andy warhol used to work at the fact that i'm explaining anyone means that i'm trying to convince myself that that was the right thing for me that's not the right thing for me whatever you're doing you know like even if it's again people are gonna call you an idiot for doing that you know you need to do things that when you say them you say them with pride you know like i work at blank you know um and that's not necessarily even the name of the agency that's just you know the something that makes you proud so so again you know it's like for people who are outside of the us and they want to work abroad it's find what your dreams are because sometimes we tend to engage with other people's dreams there's a lot of people saying i want to work for white and kennedy but if you ask them why they don't know why so try to find what's your dream um and go for that you know like because maybe your dream is is not being a drug code maybe your dream maybe you do want to become the best you know pharmaceutical copywriter in the face of earth and if that's your dream that's the dream you should be following not any of any of anyone else's dream yeah yeah and i think that that ties back to like the very beginning of what we were talking that like definitely your family and your ex-girlfriend they were not saying that because they didn't want you to be happy because what they thought would was happiness it's totally different than yours it's yeah it's so individual right yeah yeah i don't know i i i agree with you it's it's like they're trying to do the best but based on you know like yeah remember what i was telling you about the thing about context and all you have to say is like guys what happiness for me is blank and then they might be like oh again exactly even if they don't share it but my my family has always been you know i couldn't have been able to do any of these if you weren't because of my mom and dad those guys are the you know like my biggest supporters always my best friends and biggest supporters frank thank you so so much for this talk was like very very inspiring a lot of things that you say like i couldn't relate more to everything that you're saying so so so grateful that we were able to talk and i always remember so much i'd like to thank frank again for such an inspiring talk was really really great for me and i hope it was for you guys too and if you want to see more interviews don't forget to subscribe by hitting the ball on this side and if you already want to binge watch all the interviews that we've done so far just click on the card right here see ya