Watch The Video

Yup. That’s me.

I’m standing on stage at Radio Tulum. There’s a microphone in front of me. There’s an audience in front of me. There’s a camera recording the moment.

And I’m not talking.

That alone already breaks every rule of how public speaking is supposed to work.

Most speakers treat a stage like a sales funnel. You get ten minutes of attention, so you squeeze ten minutes of ego into it. You pitch your company. You talk about how smart you are. You tell your origin story. You drop a few buzzwords. You end with a call to action.

After all, the point of public speaking is to convert attention into leads. Right?

That’s what most people think.

But I wasn’t invited to Radio Tulum to talk about myself.

I was invited to talk about Customer-centric Marketing.

And the fastest way to prove whether you actually understand something… is to stop talking about it and demonstrate it.

So instead of giving a speech, I gave away my platform.

 

The moment most marketers would have grabbed the microphone

If you handed that stage to 99.999% of founders, CMOs, consultants, or agency owners, here’s what would happen.

They’d launch into their bio.
They’d talk about their product.
They’d explain their framework.
They’d explain why everyone else is doing it wrong.

They’d explain why they are different.

Because modern marketing culture has trained people to believe that visibility equals control. If you don’t dominate the room, you lose it. If you don’t lead the narrative, someone else will. If you don’t push your brand, it disappears.

So we push.
We pitch.
We perform.

And we confuse activity with impact.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth most marketers refuse to confront:
The biggest platforms in the world don’t work that way at all.

Facebook doesn’t dominate conversations.
LinkedIn doesn’t lecture you.
TikTok doesn’t present decks.
X doesn’t explain itself.

They give you a place to speak.
They give you tools to show up.
They give you a stage to become something.

And that is what turns users into marketers.

You think Facebook sells ads. That’s not what Facebook does.

In a Senate hearing, a senator once asked Mark Zuckerberg:
“If Facebook is free, how do you make money?”

Zuckerberg replied, “Ads, senator.”

And that answer went viral.

But it’s also incomplete.

Ad agencies sell ads. That doesn’t make them Facebook.

What Facebook actually built is an ecosystem of human behavior. People flirt. People argue. People self-promote. People show off their kids. People grow businesses. People look for validation. People build audiences. People chase relevance.

Ads are just a layer that sits on top of that.

The real value of Facebook isn’t the ads.

The real value is the fact that billions of people voluntarily create content every single day — for free — because Facebook gave them a place to do it.

You are not Facebook’s customer.
You are Facebook’s marketer.

And Facebook is the platform.

That is Customer-centric Marketing at planetary scale.

So when I got a platform… I treated it like a platform

When Radio Tulum gave me that stage, I had a choice...

• I could use it the way every other marketer does — to promote myself.

Or...

• I could use it the way the most powerful companies in the world do — to empower other people.

So I invited three people from the audience to come up and talk about their businesses.

I didn’t pre-screen them.
I didn’t rehearse them.
I didn’t script them.
I didn’t try to control the story.

I gave them the mic.

And something magical happened...

The audience leaned in.

They weren’t listening to a pitch. They were listening to peers. They were hearing real stories. Real challenges. Real ambition. Real vulnerability.

They learned about industries they didn’t understand.

They saw themselves reflected in the struggles being shared.

They felt something.

And here’s the part most marketers don’t expect:
They credited me for it.

Not because I spoke.

But because I created the space where others could be seen.

That’s Customer-centric Marketing in its purest form.

 

Why it worked...

People don’t trust brands.
People trust people.
People don’t fall in love with products.
People fall in love with identity.
People don’t build loyalty to features.
People build loyalty to belonging.

When you give someone a platform, you are telling them:
“I see you.”
“I value you.”
“I want to help you grow.”

And when a brand does that consistently, it becomes something far more powerful than a vendor.

It becomes a community.

And communities don’t churn.

They don’t price shop.
They don’t disappear when something cheaper comes along.

They advocate.

 

What happened next?

Over the weeks that followed that Radio Tulum event, I booked three contracts.

Not because I closed.
Not because I pitched.
Not because I followed up aggressively.

But because people saw how I treated others.

They saw what I believed in.
They felt the energy of a brand that wasn’t centered on itself.

That’s the part nobody teaches you in marketing school:
The fastest way to grow a brand is to stop trying to be the star of your own story.

Become the stage.

 

Why almost every company still gets this wrong

Right now, millions of companies are posting on social media every day.

They post their products.
They post their press releases.
They post their announcements.
They post their wins.

And then they wonder why engagement is low.

You are literally reading this on a platform that was built on Customer-centric Marketing — and most businesses still treat it like a digital billboard.

They push instead of empower.
They shout instead of listen.
They broadcast instead of invite.

And then they complain about algorithms.

The algorithm isn’t the problem.
Your mindset is.

The real shift:
Customer-centric Marketing is not customer service.

It is not responding to emails faster.
It is not sending thank-you cards.
It is not making people happy after the sale.

It is designing your entire business so that your customers become your growth engine.

So that every success they have makes your brand stronger.
So that every story they tell expands your reach.
So that your marketing budget shrinks as your community grows.

That is what Facebook figured out.
That is what LinkedIn figured out.
That is what TikTok figured out.

And it’s what almost every industry is still ignoring.

Yup. That’s me.

Standing on a stage, not talking.

Because once you truly understand Customer-centric Marketing, you realize something most marketers never do:
The most powerful thing you can do with a microphone…is hand it to someone else.

If you’re ready to build a brand that actually grows that way…Let’s talk.