Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Stop Trying to Fit In: How to Navigate Corporate Culture Without Losing Yourself with Arturo Nuñez

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Arturo Nuñez has told stories for some of the biggest brands on earth, including Nike, Apple, the NBA and Pepsi. He joins Ryan Alford to explain what separates great marketing from expensive noise, and why a customer telling your story beats anything a brand can say. Arturo shares rare stories about Kobe Bryant's savage competitiveness, Nike's open, inspirational culture versus Apple's need-to-know secrecy, and the "Bleed Blue" campaign people in India still remember 15 years later. He also predicts that AI could make apps obsolete within two years. It all ties back to his new book, The Culture Compass: Navigate the Corporate World Without Losing Yourself. Arturo makes the case that your culture and your perspective are your edge at work, and that in a world where AI has all the answers, being uniquely human matters more than ever. Topics Covered: Authentic storytelling and word-of-mouth marketing Nike vs. Apple culture from the inside Lessons from Kobe Bryant's obsession with the craft Apple's business model and the future of apps in an AI world Selling what customers actually want Culture as a business advantage Bringing your whole self to work without losing credibility POWER YOUR BUSINESS WITH HIGHLEVEL Turn more leads into customers with one platform for CRM, marketing automation, appointment booking, Voice AI and customer follow-up. Start your 30-day free trial using Ryan's link: https://www.gohighlevel.com/ryanalford Links & Resources: The Culture Compass (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Compass-Navigate-Corporate-Yourself/dp/1668032171 Arturo Nuñez: https://www.arturo-speaks.com/ Arturo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arturonunezspeaks/ Arturo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arturo-nunez-79329177 Connect with Ryan Alford: Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alford/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford

On today's episode of Right About Now, I sat down with Arturo Nunez. He is a longtime marketing executive. He's an entrepreneur. He's a brand strategist. Nike, Apple, Pepsi, NBA, just a few of the names that he's worked with. Lots of great stories. This is one you don't want to miss just for the stories alone. Insights on marketing, storytelling.

The difference between Nike and Apple culture. Fascinating stuff. And of course, his book that comes out, Culture Compass. Culture compass, coming out, October 6th. Arturo Nunez, here, right, now. Kobe used to say I wasn't the fastest guy. I wasn't the tallest guy. I didn't jump higher than most of the guys.

I just was obsessed with the craft of being a basketballer. Obsessed. Kobe would say things to me and I'd be like, wait, what? Oh, I'm playing such and such today. When he puts his left foot down, as soon as his heel touches, I know I can blow right by it. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it.

700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, Octoro? Welcome to Right About Now. What's up, Ryan? How we doing today? Are you good? Hey, man, I am always good. Even when I'm bad, I'm good. I have to tell myself that. People with I have to do some of the things I get to do and the pleasure to do it.

Even when I'm up to my ears with four kids and everything else, you know how it is. 100%. I fully get it. Gratitude. Gratitude. Just happy to be here. Happy to get another day. Attitude and gratitude at all times. The two things you can control. Fully agree. Man, you've done a lot. You got a book coming out. Simon and Schuster. We know that name. Culture Compass. We'll get to it a little bit. Who the hell is Arturo Nunez? Arturo Nunez is a guy born and raised in New York City, Harlem, New York to be specific. Immigrant parents came from Cuba and Venezuela. Spanish was my first language. English in school and spent the better part of my life, man, working in marketing at companies.

I learned marketing early. I think 16, 17 years old, I had my first job at Colbate Pamolivan marketing and learned that marketing was just the art of storyteller. Can you tell a story? Can you tell a cool story? People are excited to learn more about a product, the service, whatever, a company. And I got to do that. I got to do that from some of the best companies in the world.

I got to learn that from some of the best companies in the world. I versed into sports, worked at Nike and the NBA. So I got to tell stories about some of the greatest athletes in the world. And then I went international and started doing. that everywhere. South Africa, India, Asia, the Middle East, you name it. I've been really blessed, man, to be able to be a storyteller for a living storyteller and connecting people to products and company. Arturo, I spent a lot of time in the ad agency business. So I got to ask, I think that's what side you're on. You're on the agency side. When you were working, or you're on the brand side? I was on the brand side. I was on the brand side. I was on the brand side, but I worked with every agency under the side. What was your role where you working with, obviously, you're doing storytelling, so probably on the creative executions? Yeah, creative execution side. I started out as an assistant brand manager, associate brand manager like people do in marketing. You get assigned a brand and you got to figure out how to tell stories about that brand and everything from the copy, the packaging, the whole consumer journey, what it looks like in the store, what shelf and sort, etc.

And then I graduated over times and become a marketing director where I work with the agency, figure out what the commercials look like, figure out how to tell authentic stories. My listen, consumers can understand what something's not authentic. And people think that they can just write a check to LeBron James and it's going to solve all their marketing problems. If LeBron James has nothing to do with your product, doesn't use your product, doesn't care about your product, the consumer is going to see right through that. It's going to look phony as hell, and they're not going to move the needle. So how do you tell authentic marketing stories that make people emotionally connected to brand?

That's the real stuff. And that's what I got to do as a marketing director and a VP with the help of amazing agencies from Wyden Kennedy to Young and Rubikam, BBDO, DDB, you name it. I worked with everybody over time. I know all those names. I worked with Hill Holiday and McCann and McGarry Bowen. I spent six years of Manhattan doing that gig. And working with a lot of the same things.

Well, let's compare stories sometime. I want to get your perspective on this before we dive straight into some of the topics of the book. But with the way social media has changed, the way the attention spans have changed, the democratization of content. We had good, Arturo. In 2008 to 2011, 12, 13. We own the airways with TV spots. because that's all everybody had to watch.

If you were watching videos, but it wasn't like it is today. Now you got attention splintered everywhere. How did you navigate that time period and being able to story tell across with the media changing the way it did? We had it really good, bro. We had people undivided attention. And today that attention is boom, scattered to the winds. So that means you've got to be even better and you've got to be even faster to be able

to tell a story the captive race. Yo, I think the average watch time on social media is nine seconds. If you don't grab them in nine seconds, it's a wrap. How much can you do in nine seconds? You've got to be really good. that story's on to pull people in. And by the way, you could do slucky junk, a scare tactic media. Oh my God, right? They got to stuff. Brands aren't doing that. That's not real work. You got to be better at your craft. You got to know how to entice your audience. You got to understand

how to target your audience and tell a story that's meaningful and authentic to break through all of the clutter. People have millions and millions of choices today. How do you become something they want to listen to, something they care about? How do you understand what people care about and bring them more of that? I think it's really important. And part too is every company in the world is going to tell you they're great. Their product's great. Even when the product's shit, they're going to tell you it's great. Every company in the world.

How do you tell an authentic story about something that matters to people and get those people to repeat your story? There's one thing for a brand to tell their story about how amazing their product is. The only thing better than that is a customer telling the story of how great a brand is. So if you do great work, your customer will tell your story for you. That's the game changer. Ryan's going to tell me his podcast is great. What's better?

The thousands of people that tell me Ryan's podcast is great. That's even better. I believe them more than I believe you. You're supposed to say it's great, right? Yes. I was walking down the dock at my boat this past weekend, and a woman yelled at me, and I didn't know who it was. And she was a friend of one of the people in our marina, and she goes, I love your podcast. As he was talking about this guess I had on, I mean, we had 600-something episodes now.

People will come up to your rate. It's not like every day. It's a business show. We're pretty niche, but a popular niche show. That always means the most, and it does, man. You know, that's your fans, man. And if you gave fans talking, you know you did something right. There's nothing a brand can say that has, I don't know, even a tenth of the power of word of mouth.

It's so funny, we've gone through 50 years of modern marketing. And word of mouth is still it. Unbeatable. It's still unbeatable. That moment where somebody sees you and says, hey, man, I love what you do. I was literally on an airplane flying from Qatar to London. And I was sitting next to this Indian kid. And we start talking.

And I've never talked to anybody when I sit next to a plane. But for some reason, we got up a conversation. He told me he was from Mumbai, we start talking, and I told him that I had previously worked for Nike. And he was like, oh, my God, one of the greatest campaigns of all time was bleed blue. We did this campaign in India around cricket of all sports called bleed blue. And basically, Ryan, just to put it in a nutshell, what we did was, yo man, what if we took NCAA college football fandom and applied it to cricket? Face painted people, body painted colors, flags, madness. We applied it to cricket.

We did a campaign called bleed blue. And this kid was talking about this campaign. Dude, that was 15 years ago. He literally was like, I remember that campaign Blue Ma'Amou and B'Boo. And when I told him that it was me and my team that did it, he literally said to his parents who were across the aisle. Yo, this is the Bleed Blue guy.

They were blown away. Dude, that's what? It's 15 years old. There's nothing better for a marketer to say, man, I did something that stuff that people really appreciated, that people got into. That was a really cool moment. I love that story, man. They're leading the story where I was going to go. Tell me something to a good story. That was a good one. And I'm sitting here.

When I hear you talk about marketing, that's a brilliant. Yeah, there. That's, they can go and love and everybody goes right. But it also makes sense on so many levels. Connected tissues there, but it's not what you expect. I love that. Finding a truth. Finding a truth, something unexpected, learning something about your subject or your topic that's going to peak people's curiosity. I'll give you one more story. I'll give you a Kobe Bryant story. It's a Kobe Bryant story. I'm talking to Kobe Bryant one day and he says, you know, I love away games more than home games. That's been to my phone on. You're one of the famous Los Angeles Lakers. You play in one of the best arena. in the country. Half of Hollywood shows up to watch you play. You guys have a history of achievement and success and championships. You're a god in that building. What do you mean you like playing away

games more than home games? He said, Arturo, nothing gets me more excited. And by the way, Ryan, I clean that up. That's not the way he said it. He said, nothing gets me more excited than watching a fan with a kid on his shoulder, with a foam finger, with a Timber Wolf's jersey, leaving the arena with five minutes left because they have no chance to win. Nothing gets me more excited than that. And at that moment, I was like, Colby, you are a savage. Who pleads like that? Absolute savage. And that's who that guy was. And by the way, if you remember, Nike did a campaign about how he was fueled by hate. He was fueled by hate. Hey, he loved the haters. Hate me more. That was the campaign. He loved the opposition. People saying he can't.

That's what fueled him. That's what drove the best performances in his career is people saying he couldn't do something. That's a powerful, unique human truth. unique to that savage individual. God bless him, rest of peace. But a beautiful story about how you can find a colonel and create a story around that kernel. It is. I love that. And he was a savage. I can relate on some levels, but nothing compares to one of the all-time grades. I wish he was still around. Culture is an interesting word. It gets used a lot, especially how is it in the agency world. Culture gets thrown around a lot. I know it gets thrown around in corporate world a lot. Weaponized is probably the wrong word. Attempted to be a weapon of change. Like our culture, but it rarely

has substance in a lot of the places that I heard it used. But let's start up here. And then we're going to drill down to the tenets in the book about culture within business. Culture, in its broadest form, it's just the way you see the world. What informs the way you see the world? What beliefs, practices, customs, history, family, heritage informs the way you see the world. That, to me, is culture. A lot of people could share a culture. That's to me, you have to come from the same parents and same back to share a culture. And in corporations, there's a culture too. How do we talk about the work. How do we do the work? What do we believe about ourselves? What are the words that would synthesize what we stand for as company? That's the culture of company. And by the way,

I tell people all the time, you got to be really careful. I consult for startups. You got to be really careful because if I hire a bunch of people from Google and I don't have a strong culture in my startup, guess what they're going to default to? They're going to default to the culture they know. Google culture. Hey, nobody told me to do this differently. I'm going to do it the way I know how to do it, which is Google culture. When I left Nike and joined Apple, totally different culture. So I had to go from the way I did things at Nike, the way we talked about marketing at Nike, the way we looked at the brand and the products at Nike, to a whole different way of looking at products and brands and storytelling at Apple. Apple had a different culture. And so you have to understand the paradigm of the

culture. What is this place about? Who founded this place? What do they believe in? What's the mission statement? Why should it matter? Why does it matter to employees and why should it matter to customers? That's the culture of the company. And the better you understand the culture of the company, the more effective you'll be in that culture. If you're running a podcast, you're drinking an energy drink. That's part of the culture of your podcast. And I come in drinking beer. We're going to have a problem if I'm your employee. I don't know if we would have a problem. I'd have a bit all the time of day is I might have a beer instead of an energy drink. It's probably somewhere, right? It's quitting. I'm somewhere right now.

Our second tagline is we take the BS out of business. Sometimes it's an energy drink. Sometimes it's a beer. Let's be honest. It's beer truck Monday or Tuesday. Yes. Culture difference between Nike and Apple. Go. I went from Just Do It to Don't Do It. That's it. I worked with Apple and I thought you might go there and you did. I didn't work for them, but I worked with them. I went from Just Do It to Don't Do It. And by the way, mad respect for Apple.

It's not a $3 trillion company by accident. They're doing something's going horribly right at Apple, horribly right. Something's going really well at Apple. But the difference was Nike's culture was all about inspiration and innovation. And Apple's culture was all about finding the best people on the world and having them do a very very specific task. And sometimes not even know how it fits into the whole thing. I was one of the most senior marketing people at Apple, one of 33 in the world, most senior people in marketing. And there were many times a company was doing something, launching something, about to tell a story I had no idea

about. And if I went to my boss, the CMO of Apple, and asked them about it, he'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about. Some of your business. You don't need to know that. That's not need to know for your job. None of your business. Move on. That wasn't Nike. Nike was open book. Yo, let's inspire everybody, oh, the guy that's working on golf is doing something great about Tiger, I'd learn all about that, even though I'm in basketball. Very open communication style, very inspirational communication style at Nike, very closed silo, need to know, private secrecy environment at Apple. Both effective. Nike's not too effective today. Was effective when I was there. But Apple, very effective today, both effective, just very different ways of getting at the work and inspiring

their people and motivating their people. Yeah. Nike's lost their way a little bit with losing their categories. They even had to really open up a checkbook, but they want me to come to solve that. Some of it's easy. Some of it's hard. I say the same thing, because I was there in the belly of the beach for eight years, and we were doing very, very well. If they hit me up, yesterday's price or not today's price, as Fat Joe likes to say, but for a big check, I can help him fix back too. Some of it's pretty obvious. It goes deeper than that. Apple was, the white is more telling than you recognize. The white in the stores, that signifies their whole sort of being.

It's like one way or the highway. What color is? It's white. It's white. White. Why is hospital-like and sanitized? You know what I mean? Nothing is left to dance. We do everything deliberately by design. Yeah. It's good when your products had clear differentiation. That gap started closed with like smartphones and things like that. But all we get now is better cameras and better battery. One of the questions that I asked when I do public thinking is, hey, everybody in the room, raise your hand if you know your monthly Apple bill next to nobody raised their hand next to nobody. So wait, let me get this straight. There's a company that has three billion people in an ecosystem, charging them monthly for goods and services and nobody knows their bill. Nope. And you're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere.

It's powerful. It brought to mine. This is just straight from the cuff here, as you said that are true. Well, I reserve the right to strict it from the record. But what they say, the devil's greatest trick is making everybody think he didn't exist. What the Apple's done is, hey, the cell phone companies are the one that charge you. No, you're paying $20 there, $10 there, $5 there, but you have no idea. You do, but you don't. ICloud, Apple TV, Apple Music. Extra storage. 30% of every app you download. Yo, they've got a business model is bulletproof.

Yes, it's brilliant. App Store things, I think bothers me now with owning my own an app and doing things. That's annoying. It's kind of a damn all taxes. 30%, man. I got a prediction about that. You heard it here first. I believe within 12 to 24 months, there'll be no more apps.

You will ask your AI for what you want. And your AI will figure out how to make it happen with apps or without apps. So you'll say, hey, man, I want a domino's pizza. You know how I like it. Your app will be like pepperoni and ground beef, right? Yeah, absolutely. Make it happen. And it will show up at your house. Period, full stop.

I don't think it's a bad prediction. My prediction has been you're getting to this place of apps of one, which is kind of what you're describing a little bit. Personalize the apps. Development costs, you would have never had apps of one. But now, with that going away, the democratization of all, the coding and the LLMs, kind of knowing the functionality of all the apps, all that programming there, you said, it's just one prompt, one question away.

Why do I need? I got 50 apps on my phone. I use like five of them. What do I mean those for? If my AI knows what all those apps are, knows my logins or whatever, I don't need to go to Amazon. Hey man, send me a lamp. It looks like this. Got it. It'll be there tomorrow. I don't care how the AI got me the lamp. It could have got into the lamp store. It could have gotten a bed bath being beyond. It could have gotten a home depot. It could go to Amazon. I don't give a shit. I want the lamp. The lamp comes tomorrow. That's it. This episode is brought to you by high level. Make sure to check out the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial. If you run a business, you know leads rarely arrive when it's. It's convenient.

A call comes in while your team is helping another customer. Someone reaches out, but the follow-up gets delayed. An invoice sits unsent or a promising lead gets stuck in the wrong stage of your pipeline. I've built enough businesses to know that growth has a way of exposing every gap in your systems. That's why high-levels voice AI and managed AI agents caught my attention. High-levels voice AI can answer incoming calls, qualify leads using information from your website or uploaded documents and even book or reschedule appointments. When your team is busy, voice AI can keep that conversation moving instead of letting a potential customer slip away. Then high levels,

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UIUX becomes the friction. The app is the friction that you get out of the way, right? Because apps are there to solve the problem. If you can solve a problem without having an edy-U-I-U-X, Great. It's so funny. We can go down the, I'm down the rabbit hole now, Arturo. UiUX is meant to be the solution, right? Great user experience, user design. It's really just friction, design well. Because you don't want the friction. You don't want to hit the button. You don't want to hear the thing. You want to just know and get what you want when you want it.

Ryan, I consult for a company, a startup that's a great startup. It's called Felix Pago. And what they do is they do remittances. Basically, they send money from the U.S. to Latin America. People in Latin America need to send money to their family. They send a stuff. The first time I met with those guys, they talked me through their deck. We do the business, whatever, whatever. They said, Arturo, you know, you're a marketing expert. What do you think? And I said, well, I got good news and bad news.

Who do you want? They're like, well, give us the bad news. I was like, nobody wants remittances. And they looked at me like I was crazy. They're like, what are you talking about? Our business is on fire. Every day, millions of people are using the brand. What do you mean nobody wants remittances?

I said, nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, you know what I really want to do, Ryan? I want to send a remittance to Guatemala. No one does that. And never, not once. What people wake up and do is go, I can't believe I'm missing my little niece's birthday in Mexico City on Saturday. I want to send a little something make sure she's good. I want to make sure she has that dress she wants. I want to make sure grandma's having her big potluck dinner on

Sunday. I want to make sure the table's full. There's nothing missing over there in Panama and in Nicaragua, wherever. That's what they really want to do. So if we focus on that, that's the true need. No one needs a remittance act for what. No one wakes up thinking about that. It's getting to what people really wants. What do they want to do? What's going to move the needle for them? What's going to make them happy and solve the problem they're trying to solve? That's the core. And they understood it and they were like, cool, let's make the storytelling about that. Hey man, don't miss grandma's dinner. Here's a way for you to show up. Here's a way for you to be there even when you're not there. That's what it's all about. Yep. We're going to share stories.

A client, they wanted to do a campaign and they wanted it to be about, it was a B-to-B campaign, and it was executives. All the hours we add back to a busy executive's day, like we give them their time back. So they don't want their time back. They want to be on the golf course at Wednesday at 10 a.m. They don't want time back. We don't want time back. We don't know. We We need to show them on the golf course at 10 a.m. having a cocktail with another executive because they don't want their time back. They want what they want, which is 85% of these guys. It was male audience. 85% of them played golf four days a week.

It was in the data. It was in the research. They don't want time back. They don't want more time. They wouldn't be able to golf course. And then it enabled that. The whole spot was about them being on the golf course. And the payoff was, but why are they on the golf course at 10 a.m?

They're such busy executives. It was because we gave that back to it. That's right. That's right. Same story. You got to give them what they want, not what you think they want. Imagine if I said to you, never miss your kid's baseball game again. I got your interest, right?

Never miss your baseball game again. That's better than telling you the computer's 30% faster, right? I don't care about that. I care about making it to my kids baseball game. What's going to allow me to do that? The game's at 3 p.m. I'm normally working at 3 p.m. What's going to allow me to get there at 3 p.m.

and watch my kid play baseball. That's what I really want. There's something really interesting about your principles, with culture. And I know the terms are there, but I like that at least when I did my outline, and I know you have to say it because people think of this way. Diversity and inclusion is important, but culture is really what that's about. I even find myself this way. I'll be like, man, I am really opinionated down this one lane. I don't like that I'm not seeing all sides of this. And I think that's what culture does for you. And I think you're either ignorant to that,

you're close to it. But there's no denying that it has a lot of power and impover. did a couple. Huge powered impact. It's what builds momentum towards your mission and vision. And culture in the broadest sense, I say this all time. You know, my culture is good business. And a lot of people are like, oh, Artur, you know, they did culture some soft thing, nice to do, nice to have, whatever. Brian, real simple. I'm going to give you a simple example. I got a guy in China and he has access to millions of followers in China. And they're looking for a podcast. And this guy knows the media landscape in China. He knows how to do business in China. He knows how to get business licensing in China. He knows how to get money out of a business in China,

backs in the United States, et cetera, et cetera. And he thinks that your podcast would do great in China in Cantonese. And he speaks Cantonese. Yo, man, should we be working? Yeah, sign me up. Yeah. You want to take that meeting or not? I want to take that meeting. Let's take that meeting. I'll take it that meeting. So is culture good business? Yeah, culture's good business. Signing up that guy to help us get a million new followers in China. It's great business. Let's do that. I don't know. Yeah. Or stay forward.

And it's the same thing within your company. If you've got a broad team and you're working with clients of all types or whether you are or aren't, if having a profile within your own company to have influence, perspective, ideas is very meaningful when you are having those same briefings with those clients who's serving those types of customers. It's undeniable. Ryan, I say it like this. I say the quality of your life is a quality of relationships.

Quality of your life's quality of relationships. I think Tony Robbins is attributed with having said that first. I'm sure he didn't say it first. He just got it. Like, check. Cool Tony. If every time I come to your office, Ryan, you win and I lose, I'm going to stop coming to your office. Right?

What's in for me? I'm losing. Oh, I got Ryan on my counter. That's going to be an L. Why would I want to go do that? If every time I come to your office, I'm going to stop coming to your office. So it's incumbent upon you and I to build win-win situations. And the people that do that inside the same thing,

system get their stuff done, get their stuff prioritized, get the budget they want, get the team that they want, have the resources of the company because there's something in it for everybody, all the stakeholders, win-win situations, building win-win situations. That takes an understanding of what people want, what they need, what they're trying to solve, what they care about. It's just like the customer, but it's internal. Hey, Ryan, if I want you to have me on every week, I better know damn well what your goals are and what you're trying to do. And I got to be able to deliver something to do that, I better line up to Indian people, out to the Chinese people to get a million of them too. If I want to be on here every week, I got to understand something about you or it's not going to happen.

If it's not a win-win situation, it's not going to happen. If you lose by interacting with me, you're not going to want to interact with me. And so I think that in a way, that is a culture of collaboration and consistent collaboration and focus on goals builds winners. I'm going to summarize. I want you to expand. It's really what I tell people all the time is stop trying to be everybody else, start being yourself. people try to minimize and try to fit what's they're around versus leaning into what makes them different. That was sort of my takeaway from the synopsis of everything. Lean into that a little bit for me. 100%. Culture is your advantage.

Me and you're unique you. Man, listen, when you were in the room, Ryan, there were 90 trillion possibilities. Somebody way smarter than me did that math. There were 90 trillion possibilities. All those 90 trillion possibilities came you. You are unique. You're not a coincidence. You're a miracle.

So you're here for a specific reason, for a purpose. to manifest your greatest capability while you're here. A lot of companies, a lot of organizations, want you to be like everybody else. And then they'll fire you because they don't need you because you're like everybody else. You got to bring you to the game. What do you bring that's different?

What are people who remember about you? When you leave the room, what will they say about Ryan? What does Ryan always deliver? What does Ryan consistently deliver? That's what it's about, bringing your you to the game. And people get deluded into the idea, I just want to fit in. That's not going to work.

That's not going to get you all the way to the brass ring. You got to bring something unique. and you're qualified to do that because you are a unique human being. You can't be like anybody else, Ryan, newsflash. Everyone else is taking. Everyone else. They don't take it. People have a hard time with that, though.

There is a balance, a delicate balance in the corporate world and the professional world of being yourself versus fitting in. How would you tell people to navigate that? There's probably a good way and a bad way to do that. I tell a lot of stories, Ryan, because stories are the way that people first learn. When you were a kid, they read your stories. That's how people learned. There's a guy named John Cage. John Cage was a musician, composer, a music creator, way back in the day.

And John Cage did a song called Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds of Silence. When it came time during his show, he sat at the piano for four minutes and 33 seconds, it did nothing. And when he finished that, everybody, oh, that's incredible. Wow, John Cage, ladies and gentlemen, I'm raising. John Cage was able to do that because he was a master composer and musician before that. You can't break the rules until you master the rules. You have to master the rules first to be able to be able to be. break them time and time again the people who have broken the rules done crazy out of the box stuff

did that after they mastered the game you know you look at whatever messy name a sport whatever the greatest baseball athlete is it show hey is it Aaron Judge whatever they're able to bring their uniqueness once they master the game once the coach is not breathing down your neck because he's worried you don't know how to hit once you prove you can hit hey man do whatever you want you think they're telling Aaron Judge whether to swing three and no or not they're not he's Aaron Judge You know what I mean? He's already proven he can hit the ball. So now he can break the rules. It's 3 and 0. He might take that cut because he's Aaron Judge. You try that as a rookie. See how quickly you're on the bench.

Right? I love that. I love that, man. A lot of people listening to you're younger need to hear that story, which is you can be Billy badass and different. And you could be your cultural self and all that. But you got to prove it first. And not because you've got a fate fitting in or something. You can do it your own way. But you need to put some wins on the board to show that you've got the credibility. Yeah, you got to deliver. You want that raise? You want that promotion. But how about you just show me something? Show me.

Don't tell me. Ryan, I have people that come to me for mentorship all the time. And they come to me and I listen to them. And I'm like, my guy, you're bringing a baseball back to a soccer game. How can I help you? You're not even in the game. You're not even in the game. You're wearing your helmets on the basketball court.

You're not even in the game. You've got to get in the game, understand the game you're playing, and master the game. And then you can break the rules. Then you can bring your unique self. Then you can have an out of the game. of the box opinion. Then you can deviate from the norm. But you got to understand the game. Otherwise, you don't have the credibility to do any of that. You don't have any wins. You got to establish some wins. And that you deliver that by mastering the game. Understanding the game you're

playing and mastering the game for it. Talking with Arturo Nunez, he's the author of the Culture Compass. Arturo, when I was going through parts of the book, I started thinking about AI and how your book is actually more relevant because of AI. Because AI has given us all the answers. And And what makes everything different is the human element, the cultural element, the perspective. We've all got the answers at our fingertips. It's more the layer on of everything that's in this book that is more relevant, more important than it's ever been. Ryan, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's funny because people said, oh my God, the DJ business is dead because everybody has access to all the music.

Now, why would anybody hire D? Okay, really? Cool. Ryan, you and I have all the music. Okay, in the next five minutes, Ryan, let's play like Diplo or Jazzy Jeff or Tiesto. Yeah, good luck with that. But why? You got all the music.

What do you mean? You can't do it? Because I'm not damn. I just spent 40 years figuring out how to do this, so I can't do that. Hey, Ryan, you got a dictionary, right? You got a dictionary? You got access to the words, right? You got all the words, right?

Cool. Maya Angelou, go, do it. Zero chance. No. Why? You got all the words. It's all available to you. AI actually makes the expert the craftsman even more important.

Wow, that guy's really good. You know why? Because I got all the words and I can't do that. Because I got all the records and I can't do that. because I got all the answers from AI, and I still can't do that. That's what makes me special. Culture, taste is a really interesting word. That's what.

The taste makers have never been more important. And culture is a big part of that. I don't know what led Michael Jackson to put together the beats and the dancing and everything he did brilliantly, throwing away all the throwout to the side, all the contraversion, just to focus on man of talent. It's like, I don't know. But that's a taste and ability and a creativity and that was so far ahead of its time. And there's countless examples, but that is what today sort of exposes the wannabes really quickly. People can either be intimidated by that or they can go lean into your different.

Express what you think, what you are, what you've been through instead of synthesizing it to this standard because the computer can synthesize it. We've got to be more human. Do the things that the computer can't do, be more you. You know, you mentioned Michael Jackson, a great example. My kids, I got kids, 23-year-old and 17-year-old. And they'll talk about Beyonce or Bruno Mars or. or Billy Elish or Katie Perry or Taylor Swift, whatever. They talk about.

And I'm always like, you know, I'm old school dude. I date myself. So I'm like, hey, let me show you kids something. And I pulled up a video on YouTube. And the video was Michael Jackson at a concert in Croatia, somewhere, Serbia, someplace in Eastern Europe. And people fainted when he came on stage, Ryan. Ryan, people in the front row that paid four grand for a ticket.

When they asked those people, how was the show that were like, I don't know, I didn't see the show. He came on stage and I fainted. I missed the whole show. I was back in the 10. with the ER people. Come on, bro. That way does that now.

Off the wall, go put that on for somebody that's never heard. Don't know that is in today. And just marvel at dawn. It's the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder's album

Songs in the Key of Life, an album that is perfect from beginning to end. 50th anniversary. The guy hasn't had a number one hit since 1969. Everybody knows all the songs on Songs in the Key of Life

everywhere in the world. It's insane. How? How? You know, man, did the work. That's craftsmanship right there. That's craftmanship. That's the best musicians on earth playing together. That album probably took years to make. Not the three months that it takes to put out a rap song today. Took years to make. You can tell the quality. The quality's there.

And that's why it's timeless. It is parallel to sort of like everything today. We've got the tools that do speed things up and we can lean into that. But there's a taste and a blend that happens when talent meets opportunity meets ability and just a fire to get it done and a willingness to put your neck out there. Kobe used to say I wasn't the fastest guy. I wasn't the tallest guy. I didn't jump higher than most of the guys. I just was obsessed with the craft of being a basketball. Obsessed. Kobe would say things to me and I'd be like, wait, what? Oh, I'm playing such and such today. When he puts his left foot down, as soon as his heel touches, I know I can blow right by it. What are you talking about? I've watched film or the guy I'm playing against tonight.

Endless film, hours of film. I know exactly what to do against this particular guy. That's a crazy level of obsession. By the way, Kobe said, Michael Jackson and I were friends. He said this week one day. And I said, you and Michael Jackson were friends? It's like, yeah, I was like, what did you have in common? It's like, the obsession with details, the obsession with craft, and the fact we sacrifice everything to be the best of what we do. There it is. Not a lot of people want to do that for day, Ryan. Not a lot of people willing to do

that today. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, but it's rewarding and it pays off. Arturo talked to me about where everybody can get the book, details, website, all that stuff. Thank you, my brother. The Culture Compass comes out October 6th on Simon Schuster, Available everywhere you buy your books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon books, Apple Books, you name it available, everywhere books are sold. The audiobook is on Spotify. It's on Audible, wherever you listen to your podcast, the audio book, be there in my voice. I thought I was going to be easy to do. It was really hard. It took me five days in the studio to read my book perfectly, which is crazy. But available where you find your media, I hope that people go out and take a look.

It's chock full of insights for anybody who's navigating an organization, navigating a culture, trying to be their best selves, trying to show up as their full selves. It's a great guide for all of that. And available October 6th, Simon Schuster, everywhere you find great books and great podcast and great audio. Arturo's been a lot of fun, man. Ryan, thank you, man. I really appreciate you, opening your doors here to your place, man. I love with the work that you do.

Sharing your audience with me, really appreciate it. Love to come back one day, maybe with some more stories for you. I didn't get into my phone and MJ stories. We could do that too. Open invitation, my friend. This is exactly how I like these to go. This felt like talking with an old friend and sharing stories more than that work. I'm blessed to do it.

I'm blessed to have you on. Thank you, Ryan. I really appreciate you. My next time we'll do it a little later. We'll crack a beer. Let's do that. Hey, exactly. Hey, man, I'll do it.

Hey, either here in South Carolina or I'll come down to Miami or something. Absolutely. You're invited. You're welcome to time. All right. Hey, guys. You know where to find us. Ryan is right.

com. You'll find the entire episode audio, video, highlight clips. You'll have a link to the book. It is Culture Compass out October 6. He is Arturo Nunez. I am. Brian Alford. See you next start or write it about now.

Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life. Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call. Launch the thing. Fix the problem.

Build what you keep talking about building. For more, follow Ryan Alford on Instagram at Ryan Alford. And watch or listen to every episode at Ryan is right. com. This is right about now. Now quit waiting. Go win.