2009
IPOP Network begins in Malta.
A publication, media and marketing business grew from getting to know businesses, their owners and the communities around them. Its work included All Malta Online and the television series TekTiek.
First WHOist · CEO & Founder of GTK®
I Get To Know People.
That is the work. GTK is the company I built around it.
Charles J. de Guara C.J.
The simple answer
We Get To Know — then we build value from what we know.
The work
One root. Several expressions.
People are not data points, titles, transactions or dates on a stone. They are WHO they are. GTK begins by getting to know the person, then turns that knowing into something useful.
The publication, the sales-enablement work and the remembrance work are not separate careers. They are value chains growing from the same act: paying attention to people closely enough to understand, introduce, serve and remember them better.
01 · MEDIA
GTK.us
We Get To Know People with you and share what we learn.
Explore the publication → 02 · SALES ENABLEMENTGTK YC
We Get To Know Your Customers for you before the conversation begins.
Get to know your customers → 03 · REMEMBRANCEGTKME®
We Get To Know them so they may be known and remembered.
Explore known & remembered →The path
It took years to name what I had always been doing.
My career has crossed media, technology, marketing, e-commerce, sales and business building. The industries changed. The common thread did not: I asked questions, found the person beneath the title, and used what I learned to help people and organizations move forward.
GTK is not a pivot away from that history. It is the clearest expression of it.
2015
The work moves back to the United States.
Years of commercial leadership and client work continued to sharpen the same ability: understand the WHO before deciding what should be built, sold or said.
2026 →
GTK becomes the work.
No more separate identities competing for attention. Media, customer knowing and remembrance now grow from one coherent system built around people.
What I believe
The WHO comes first.
We can describe people by their work, history, culture, faith or accomplishments. None of those alone is the person.
- 01 Everyone deserves to be known.
- 02 Knowing should come before judgment.
- 03 People should not be reduced to a single label.
- 04 What matters about a life should not simply disappear.
About Charles
Curious by nature. A builder by habit.
Charles J. de Guara is a Basque-Maltese-American founder, publisher and business builder. Born in Florida and raised between the United States and Malta, he learned early that similar-looking lives can contain entirely different worlds.
He has built publications, teams, commercial systems and businesses across the United States and Europe. People who have worked with him tend to describe the same pattern: he asks past the obvious, sees potential in people, teaches until they can stand on their own, and turns understanding into action.
Today, as First WHOist and CEO of GTK®, he is focused on one long-term undertaking: building the company, profession and body of work devoted to getting to know people.
Conversations
Podcasts, interviews & thoughtful rooms.
I am interested in conversations about the future of human-centered media, what it means to truly know a customer, preserving a life beyond an obituary, and building one coherent body of work over decades.
People & identity
Human media in the age of AI
Sales through knowing
Memory & remembrance
Building GTK