Albert Baez meets with Creative Haven host, Mitchel Dumlao, to talk baseball, business to business and how to keep isolation at bay when you’re starting a new endeavor. . .
Mitchell: What’s good creative people? Welcome to Creative Haven, a weekly podcast that explores creativity and how to build brands through creative content, marketing and advertising. My name is Mitchell Dumlao, a director, artist, and entrepreneur that loves to help people value their creativity, and find their flow state. Now let’s get those creative juices flowing.
Hey everyone, I am super stoked for today’s episode because I interviewed Albert Baez. Albert is the co-founder and president of Blended Sense, a media technology company in Austin, Texas that matches the right creatives with small businesses to produce digital content to help them grow their companies.
In this episode, we talk about his journey as a baseball player, to a B2B tech sales expert, and how that helped him build his company. How Blended Sense uses data to match the correct creative with the proper company, to create a safe work environment that produces effective content. Why content is important for all parts of the business, from marketing to sales to internal training, why all companies should invest in it, and why creatives need to get out of isolation and interact with other creatives to expand their opportunities and stay passionate.
And if you are enjoying this podcast, please remember to subscribe, rate, review, and share with your friends who you think will like this episode. And for those looking to learn about video content creation and strategy, I have a free online training that will teach you everything that you need to know to create effective video content to grow your brand. From developing content strategy to developing videos like a pro, to optimizing your social media posts to get the most traffic, its an amazing course I’ve put together based on years of experience helping companies grow their brands online through video content, and I wanted to give this to you for free, because I really believe in the power of video and how it can really empower others to tell their story and spread their messages and grow their brands and business and their careers through content. Visit services.thecreativehaven.com/freetraining.
All right, let’s get into the episode.
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Creative Haven. I’m excited because I talk with Albert Baez, the president and co-founder of Blended Sense here in Austin and it was a pleasure meeting him through a friend of ours, and I connected with some other people at his company.
So let’s get right into it. Albert, was a pivotal moment in your life?
Albert: We’re getting right into it. Wow, throw me off the deep end. I love it. Man, I’m really appreciative of you having me on here, and I love your energy and I love what you’re doing. So for me, I like to think of it in chapters of my life and the first chapter was all revolving around baseball. I’m a Dominican American, son of immigrants, and you know education and sports was the way out. I grew up in Washington Heights, New York, and if anyone likes Broadway, that’s a new musical, and really put us on the map if you will, but that’s where I grew up, and it was tough coming up. Parents working multiple jobs so it was all about baseball and all about education and it got me all the way through college.
I played at Fairfield University, and Purchase College, then I ended playing for the Dodge City A’s out in Kansas for two seasons and I even got to coach at the college level before my injury happened, so I got injured and so everything that I had worked for, and dedicated my time and effort was just all taken away within the blink of an eye, if you will.
There was surgery as an option and rehab as an option but it was really one of those moments where it was time to think about something else. And so that moment for me was a really pivotal time. Not just because of what happened, but because of what happened after. It took me about eight months, nine months to get back on my feet. I don’t remember much of that time. I was bartending in New York City. You know it’s like the story you hear in the movies. . . washed up Dominican Republican baseball player is now a bartender in New York. And I hurt a lot of people at the time because I was so hurt. A lot of friends and family. I was pushing everybody away.
Mitchell: Oh wow.
Albert: And it wasn’t until my best friend, who’s a software developer that I grew up with, Patrick, he basically. . .I don’t know if anyone’s seen out there, Coach Carter, but I like to call it a Coach Carter moment in my childhood bedroom, where he was like, “Dude, like yes, it hurt, and yes, you’re in a bad spot, but your friends and your family are here, and there’s still so much left to do in this life and we want to support you in this next chapter.” And so, if it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where I’d be right now. But eventually, he said, hey, they’re hiring sales people at my company, Yodle and you should come try out, if you will. (Laughter) And I didn’t think I’d ever be in a corporate environment, or in that type of environment, ever in my life so it was really hard to adapt, but I took the leap and I did so it definitely changed my life and my trajectory forever.
Mitchell: Wow, so . . . listen to the whole podcast here. Or listen here.
