Podcast Transcription

Hey, podcast! So, I have another special episode for you guys today. 

This one is an audio from a podcast interview that I did a couple of days ago with these cool guys from a podcast called “Can You Teach Me That”.

I think it was a great interview. It’s going to probably help a lot of you. There’s a lot of things that we covered of course but one of the main things that I believe is going to be a big takeaway for all of you is that I went deeper into what was my story and WHAT IS THEY KEY for you or anybody wherever you are at to accomplish success in this environment that we are all living in right now. 

2019 and going beyond 2019, we’re getting towards the end of the year now, end of this decade. Believe it or not, it’s pretty incredible. 

But in this podcast, I give you a lot of tips and information on that subject. I think you’re going to like the interview and you’re going to get a lot more reality in my story about how I got to where I am today.

And hey, what’s better than

being able to travel on the footsteps that somebody else has traveled already and repeat the successful actions. 

I can tell you that something that I am doing every single day myself, I’m always learning from people that are higher than me because possibilities for expansion are pretty much unlimited. That’s something that I’ve learned throughout the years.

There’s never really a finish line

especially if you’re a real entrepreneur.

It’s going to be a lot of a mindset but you have to make some changes for you to be able to continue to expand and take advantage.

It’s never straight up and vertical. Anybody that gave you that idea was feeding you false information. 

IT’S A PROCESS

I’ve had a lot of failures but I am lucky enough that I’ve had more success in life than I’ve had failures. That’s what made me a winning entrepreneur. 

I hope that you like this interview. I’m going to keep on providing more value to you guys that here are listening to this podcast. I appreciate you very much. 

Again, thanks for watching and thanks for listening!

I hope that you follow me on social also. I’m always doing a lot of content there.

Would you look me up on YouTube, @manuelsuarez or anywhere – your preferred platform whether that’s LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, etc.

I’m always working aggressively towards giving you a lot of value and information that is practical that you can implement towards your business and the expansion of your business now. 

I hope that you like it. Make sure that you SUBSCRIBE to my podcast. There’s going to be an option on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or wherever you might be listening to this to subscribe and write a review if you can if it has helped you in any way. It will greatly be appreciated.

You can help me spread the word and help more people to get the advantage of the modern opportunities that we have today.

Let’s do one big announcement before I get into today’s podcast. 

Hopefully, some of you guys are there. We can meet up and chat some. It’s going to be a great convention.

We’re going to have a lot of great speakers. I’m going to be talking about e-commerce and growth hacking strategies for growing your brand, growing your Amazon brand or any e-commerce business that you have.

That’s the talk that they want me to expand, that they want me to talk about. I do a lot of different things and help you generate leads and grow your brick and mortar but this one is going to be focused on the e-commerce sellers that want to grow and do some other successful actions that I have done over the last several years.  

If you want to check that out, I am going to put a link down below. There’s a special promo code that you can insert on the checkout.

You’re going to get a $200 discount if you want to join us on this Traffic and Conversion Summit 2020 which is hosted by Digital Marketer.

So, without further ado, I’m going to let you listen to today’s podcast. Hopefully, you will enjoy it. You’re going to get a lot of value from it. I will see you in the next episode. 

Interview With Martin and Neil from Can You Teach Me That Podcast 

Martin: Here we are for another episode of Can You Teach Me That. My name is Martin Clausen.

Neil: And I am Neil Drought. 

Martin: Today we have the absolute pleasure to have Manuel Suarez with us here today. Manuel is not only the CEO but he’s also the founder of Attention Grabbing Media which is a digital marketing agency who specializes in the Messenger chat bot but I know he does much more than that. 

There’s a strategy branding social media as a whole and I’ll let Manuel talk more detail about that. But, Manuel, before we get started, I want to have kind of a question to talk a little bit about your personality traits and how you might think the way you do so we understand about the answers as we go ahead. 

So, I want to know.

You can have dinner with only a living and also a dead person. Who do you choose and why? 

Manuel: Living person, man! Nothing like life, that’s for sure. I’m not particularly fond of The Walking Dead, zombies, or dead people. I’d rather engage with human beings. I’m an extrovert Martin, definitely an extrovert. 

Martin: Okay. So, let me rephrase in essence. Who would you want to have dinner with if you can pick anybody in the world today,

who would you want to sit down and have dinner with? 

Manuel: I answered your question literally, right? There are two ways that I could go about it. I can have that person that I guess I’d been a fan for most of my life, that I admire personally. That could be somebody like Micheal Jordan just because I grew up being an athlete, playing sports, and doing all that was a big part of my life.

If I were to sit down with somebody that I knew was an incredible person that accomplished incredible things in life, I would probably want to sit down and pick the brains of somebody like Steve Jobs.

I read his book. I read his biography. I do not relate with the way he handled people because I know how he built his empire. It was not necessarily with honey. He had an intense personality overall. But, I believe that he was a special individual that accomplished some great things and that’s something that I look up to for sure. 

Martin: I loved that. First and foremost, I don’t know if you can see it but I got a Koby and Lebron right there, a symbol for fans. So, the Michael Jordan answer made you near and dear to my heart already. So that would be something that we can talk about for hours.

Manuel: I think I’m getting older. How old are you, Martin?

Martin: I’m 34.

Manuel: Okay, good. So, you’re more on the Koby and Lebron era. 

Martin: So, essentially, before we dive in because I know you have so much to teach us. I’ve been checking up on some of the stuff and I cannot waste it. 

But I want to know a little bit about kind of your hobbies and passions if there are any around with you doing that. I know that you grew up as a pretty exceptional tennis player. 

But what do you nowadays, if it’s not marketing, what are your hobbies and passion you like spending time on?

Manuel: I don’t know any subject other than marketing in my life, Martin. That’s a great question. Just kidding. I can tell you that my life revolves around three distinct areas and that’s it. It’s very simple to describe my days in and out. 

It’s marketing and running my agency. It’s a lot of fun. That’s my number one hobby – it’s running my organization. It’s the one that I enjoy most of all of them. My kids, I have three of them and that’s another part of my life, my wife, and I enjoy them quite a bit. 

Going back to the subject of marketing, just like these kids enjoy playing Fortnite and Xbox, I enjoy marketing, selling stuff, capturing attention, helping others, and teaching. That’s my fun. That’s my passion and what drives me every single day.

So, we’re talking about my marketing business, my kids and my football passion which is with the Dallas Cowboys. American football, you guys are not big fans of American football generally, right? But over here, it’s a big deal. That’s what I do on Sundays.

Last night we had a game, Monday night. I try to go and visit the cowboys as much as possible to see them play throughout the year. But that’s my three areas.  

I got my marketing agency, I got my kids and I got my Dallas Cowboys and that’s all I do. 

Martin: Nice. I have a friend who was a die-hard Cardinals fan. Then they go balls to the walls. It’s extreme. That’s the funny thing about it.  

It’s not widespread. But, when you have fans they seem to be die-hard up for watching the games and all that. 

Manuel: Totally. I’ll be in a bad mood if they lose. I’ll be in a great mood if they win. The people I know do not talk to me. My kids, they stay away and they stop bothering me. That’s just the way it is. I can’t help it. It’s just the way it is. 

It’s quite connected to entrepreneurial DNA meaning that 

• We are competitive
• We like to win

I don’t like to be mediocre at anything. When I do something, I WANT TO DO IT WELL.

I was like that my whole life. I played tennis and I wanted to be the best. If I don’t win, I will be so mad and rage for days. I will just get back to the courts and I will keep on practicing until I get better. 

Anything that I did in life whether that’s good or bad, I wanted to be the best. I did a lot of bad things in life and I was the best at doing bad things, too. I was really good at destroying, too. It’s a skill that I mastered, too – destroying girls and other things. I’m not going into many details but when you are a good entrepreneur, you have that competitive will that you want to win. 

I want my football team to win and I take it very seriously.

I had my executive assistant. When she started working with me, she was trying to figure out life around me and things that were important. 

She tells me, “Okay, your calendar is open on Sunday.” And I was like, “No, it’s not. What do you mean? The Cowboys are playing.” And then she goes, “LOL.” I almost fired her. I was like, “What do you mean LOL? I’m telling you the Cowboys are playing on Sunday. Are you kidding me?”

People don’t understand that passion and drive but it’s real. As long as you get to do what you like to do and you keep on flourishing, expanding and helping other people, why bother? Why criticize what other people like to do, right? 

Martin: This is going to be fun, Manuel. I can already tell. Can you do mind taking us back. So, we already know the fact that you had the tennis player background and that was probably most even you’re a kid. If I am to ask you now, tell me about up until the point where you had that switch in your life when you started at the agency. I think it was in 2015. Am I correct? 

Manuel: Yeah, it’s been a long life right now.  

Martin: For me, with the podcast what we like here is we want to show people that even though you might have walked in one path, you switched at one point and I kind of want to get into like, was it a specific thing? Which would be relevant for you to take us as far back as you can up until 2015?

I WASN’T INTERESTED IN ANY OF THAT STUFF.

I used to hope and I’m telling you for real. It’s kind of funny but this is the reality. I used to hope that I would find a powerful woman to marry that maybe had a lot of money.  Or maybe that my dad will make so much money that I’m going to be just fine because eventually, I’m going to get an inheritance. 

That’s just the way that I operated especially because I didn’t have a way, I didn’t know that I could produce money.

First of all, I didn’t believe that I had this skill to produce money. Second of all, I didn’t have a career. So, the system that I was growing up in, I would agree that I was supposed to be a failure. Why? Because I didn’t graduate from college, because I barely graduated from high school. 

The only reason I graduated in high school was that I had a way with words and I knew how to talk my way through things. I was able to talk my way through university even though I was failing all over the place. I was not supposed to succeed. I didn’t have any real evidence that I had any inkling of what I’m doing today on this particular subject. I still don’t have a certificate on the wall. 

In 2010, my beginning is, I guess we can call it having no choice or what they also describe as NECESSITY LEVEL meaning that

I had no choice but to produce energy so my family can survive. 

If I didn’t, the family would not be able to feed itself. 

In 2010, the economy collapsed in the United States. I had a 9-5 job. I was making $500 a week. It cost me $400 out of $500 to keep my house and pay for that mortgage that I couldn’t afford because I was given a house that I was not supposed to be given and that was what’s causing the economy at that moment. In 2007, things are going downhill in the United States.

So, in 2010 I looked at my wife in her eyes and I said, “Baby, I don’t have money to buy diapers and I don’t know what to do. My job has decided to cut my pay in half. I have to figure something out. I promise you I will.”

At that point which is 9 years ago, I declared bankruptcy and I had to start all over, look at possible options. I lost my job and I didn’t know what else to do.

So, it was a process of every single day figuring out what am I going to do with my life. 

My dad had a business called NaturalSlim. That business in Puerto Rico was already in trouble. Puerto Rico was bankrupt. Puerto Rico was in a lot of its own trouble and he was not able to grow on that island – he was stuck in it. 

We had a combination of difficulties. Everybody was collapsing in all possible angles.

I have three babies. At that point, my third baby was born in 2010. I had 2006, 2008 and 2010. I felt like an obligation to figure out a solution for them.

So I spent a few years looking at the stock market, maybe learn how to do this, or maybe figure out how to get a loan so I can flip a house. I tried a billion things. Most of those things failed. 

In 2013 was the first moment in which I found something that really felt right and that was an introduction to the Amazon world by my brother-in-law.

From there, it’s a long story. Six years of expansion that has gotten me to where I’m at today. Big brands, handling accounts for incredible people from Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson to a person running a million-dollar corporation a year, Mr. Tom Cummings to Dr. Eric Berg to making my dad an international celebrity – all those things happened in the last 6 years alone.

Entrepreneurship is not about only ups.

It’s about ups and downs.

That’s what people forget about. The downs are part of it. Only in movies, you go straight up and vertical but not in real life. 

In real life, you go down, you get some experience, you go back up and then you go down again. That’s just the way it is.

I’ve got a lot of experiences. I think that in 2016 I had accomplished a lot of success with my brands and a lot of expansion more than I could have ever dreamed about and with my dad making him an international phenomenon especially in the Latin American world. That led me to, okay, maybe I can do this for other companies. 

I created the AGM Marketing Agency at that point to start taking in clients and helping them out. Today, we’re on an organization of 54 staff.

LONG STORY SHORT!

Martin: Yeah! It’s like I’ve got a real effect of it. So, you had 3 years there were things were really rough from what I can do the calculation right, where you’re probably living from a paycheck or whatever you can do.

With the Amazon thing, how long did it take you to start learning? Did you start at the stage of as in zero marketing knowledge and your brother-in-law held your hand and started to guide you through it? How would you approach towards if somebody who might want to go like, how did he start if I’m looking to start? What were your first steps?

It was a $5000 program. I didn’t have any money to buy it. We decided to split it between four people and we all shared the access which I believe that’s kind of illegal to do so but I had no option to get in any other place. 

THIS IS THE TRUTH

The truth is I NEVER DID THAT PROGRAM!

I started with that. I don’t know if you know how the whole thing works but there are people who are promoting that program and those people give you special bonuses to join the program. 

I went in through an organization called Rapid Crush. This organization had people like Jason Fladlein and Ben Cummings.

These guys were the ones that introduced me to the Amazon world. They had their own training and I clicked more with their training than I did with anything else. 

If I were to go back again to a new unit, if I had to be sent to that point again with all the experiences that I’ve had, I wouldn’t even start with a course and I can tell you that right now. 

Anybody that’s listening to this podcast that wants to go down a similar path,

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY A COURSE,

let me tell you that.

If you have extra money and let’s say that you are in a position similar to what I was, even going down the path of studying all the free content out there will get you enough to get started. You can go to YouTube and find questions on how to start an Amazon business. There’s a lot of free education and free resources. 

The reason that I’m telling you this is because I’m a big believer in education obviously, Martin. You know that I have training, I have podcasts, I have entire programs of different subjects from Facebook Advertising. So, I’m a believer in education.

But, I’m also a believer in not having EXCUSES more importantly. 

If somebody tells me, “Look, Manuel. The thing is, I cannot afford your programs.”

Well, let me tell you something. There’s so much free information out there that if you put attention on it, you’re going to get enough data that otherwise you would have to pay for it.  

Now, what is the difference between all the free information and what you get on a course like the ones that I sell or anybody else out there sells? 

When you buy a course, when you have the advantage, the wherewith all of having money to buy a course, you get the perk of having a road map. You get to go to step A, to step B, step C, etc. And that is the advantage of a course. 

But if you’re on a condition that all you can afford is a cell phone bill and you don’t have any money to buy a $1000 course or a $500 course, I want you to know that

any excuse that you have is not valid.

Right now we have, for example, this is a podcast and you’re getting educated.

You can listen to a podcast, you can watch YouTube series, pieces of training. You can watch so much content out there. There’s so much education that the excuse of “I cannot afford a course” is no longer valid.

That’s the way that you have to get this done for you to be able to continue to grow. 

I can tell you that in my case, Martin, I had no money. My dad didn’t have any money and I didn’t have any solution for that.

What I did was…

I focused on doing as much free training as possible.

I did this course with my brother-in-law through the Rapid Crush program and these guys that I got all excited about and then I did a lot of free training – I listened to podcasts. Instead of listening to music, I was actually listening  to trainings. I bought $10 audio books. I read and read and watched and watched. And just for a year, I looked at how do I get really good at this? How do I become a professional in this area? 

It is 2014 now, 1 year of no training, I still did not have money to invest in a brand because this is the reality, if somebody is telling you that you can start your brand with $200, they are lying to you.

YOU NEED SOME MONEY TO START!

You need a couple of thousand dollars to invest to create your own brand. It doesn’t have to be a lot but you need some money to get started, to do some initial marketing, to get some positioning on Amazon, to get some e-Commerce sale. You need some capital and that’s the reality. 

I had to figure out at some point I’m going to learn so much, I’m going to study so much that I’m going to become an asset to anybody else out there. 

So, what happened was I had a friend who also still works with me. I had a job, he was also working there. This friend, he was selling bed sheets on the road. 

Ernesto Barrientos selling bed sheets

He used to buy bed sheets for $11 from China. He had a supplier in the United States. These bed sheets were called Clara Clark and it was an $ 11-bed sheet.

He used to put a banner sign and put a tent on different corners of the city that we were living in and then he used to sell them for $20 or $25. Every single bed sheet he will profit $9, $14. I saw this and I was like WOW.

What we did was we grabbed those same bed sheets. I said 200 of them, let’s just start with that. And, we printed labels on our computer, just super cheap design. We printed them out, cut them off, grabbed those labels, removed the Clara and Clark. I’m not kidding. Go to Amazon and check Clara Clark. You are going to see those labels that are at the top. 

All we did was we removed those labels and we put brand new labels on it and that was our brand. Our brand was called Cosy House Collection. 

And then, us in our pajamas at 9 o’clock at night, me and two other guys without me investing a penny, we took this brand, we put it on Amazon.

This Amazon brand within 9 months,

it was doing $100,000 a month.

Within 18 months,

it was doing $600,000 in sales a month

just like that, from our kitchen in our pajamas. 

Just to tell you an idea, this era that we have in front of us, we take it for granted. We are using these phones all the time, we are all communicating over the internet.

Supposedly, presidents are being elected with the use of it but we don’t understand the power that it has to help us build brands. That’s the idea. That’s my goal – it’s to HELP PEOPLE WAKE UP!

Somebody like me – ex-drug addict, bankrupt, no training, no marketing career, no degrees

but I AM ABLE to build 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figure businesses like that. 

What is it? Is it because I’m a genius or is it because I woke up to the opportunities and decided to do something about it? It’s quite magical. 

I see a lot of people around me that are smarter than me. I just decided to do something about it and that’s all. 

It’s a process for all of us. But, the opportunity is quite big for any of us that want to get something done. So, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT!  

Neil is here. I’m glad to hear you. I’ve been looking at your face for a long time. 

Neil: Yeah. I’m the quiet one.   

Manuel: If you’re the quiet one, you’re not supposed to have a dragon behind you, man. You’re like a dragon. Come on, let’s conquer the world.  

Neil: You’ve kind of hit it on the head at the start, at the beginning of that. 

Manuel: We’ve got the hope and the dragon. Sorry, I’ve just got to say that. Okay, go ahead Neil. I promise I won’t interrupt again. 

Neil: You’ve kind of hit it at the start of it and the end because you were saying about how you were just hoping to find somebody rich to marry you or your dad would have done big.

There’s a lot of people that are very much, I’d love it if I won the lottery and I’m waiting for that landfall that will not happen unless you just literally went I can’t wait for that, I have to push on and you have. 

Martin: Well, isn’t it that also, in the case of Manuel, this is a lonely game. You have to also probably agree to the fact that we, this entrepreneurial spirit, that’s not the majority of people thinking that way.

You must also know what you’re driving all these. That’s not what you see most of entrepreneurs as far as personality traits.

Do you feel like everybody, you could do this if they have that but not everybody has that kind of drive?

Or, do you think they’re going to be able to adopt that and you will pave the way? Or by doing this by showing it isn’t necessarily enough for a lot of people? They’re going to doubt themselves for some reason.

It’s true. I’m a little crazy and I’m a little unique like that. 

There’s a few people that are key personalities or strange. I believe that.

Now, I didn’t believe that about myself a few years ago. I can tell you that a few years ago, for one second, I did not consider myself to be special. I didn’t.

The only person that I felt considered me special was my wife. That’s the reality. 

I didn’t see myself as a super-being. 

Now, I do. Now, I consider myself special because it’s inevitable for me to look back and see what I built and realize that most people have not done that – 99.99% of people have not accomplished the expansion that I have in the last 6 years. 

I have a lot of staff under me that look up to me and I see that they also believe in my drive and passion and they stick with me. So, I understand that about myself now. 

But, no matter where somebody is at, they can all go to another level – they can all EXPAND, they can all GROW if they make some key changes.

Now, as Neil was talking about, I literally had that viewpoint of ‘I want to have somebody else make my life easier instead of me figuring out how to make my life easier’. 

I’ve talked about this with my dad. This is not a secret because I told him how I used to feel about it. I don’t know if you guys know about my dad but he’s a health nut, he’s a health expert. That’s his thing. I had a moment in which I looked at him and I said, “This guy’s going to probably outlive me.” Seriously, right? And I said that it’s not going to happen. 

If I keep on waiting for this guy to make my life easier, it’s just not going to happen.This guy is probably headed to 110 years old, just the way that he’s at right now. He’s 70 years old. He looks super young, energetic, passionate, strong-driven, managing the business every day, creating content of 7-10 videos a week. He’s a beast! 

When is that going to slow down? 

At some point, I was like, “I guess I have to do something about myself because he seems to be pretty healthy.”

So, I had that wake-up moment especially looking at my kids and seeing how there’s a lot of things they could have but they don’t, there’s a lot of things in life that they could enjoy but they can’t.

As I was looking at that, it just became something that I took responsibility for and I said that I’m going to do something about this, I’m just going to change this. 

I didn’t know that it was going to happen. 

When you look at it 6 years now in the making, it’s been such a long stretch but at the same time, it just happened like that. 

Do you know what I mean? It’s a combination of

WOW! That went by fast! How do I have this agency already?

How do I have this business? How does my dad have 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube? How do we go from 1 small bankrupt island to 9 countries and doing 40 million dollars a year?

Well, it’s one step at a time climbing that mountain, learning more, focusing, stopping on wasting time on things that are not helping you, learning obsessively. That’s a good secret formula.

“If you are not learning

every single day

something new,

your potential to grow

is highly limited.

You’ve got to learn. “

“You’ve got to stop having the idea that you know everything about a subject. You’ve got to realize that you don’t know anything and that you want to learn because there’s a lot of people out there taking advantage of these opportunities, of these platforms.”

If you take advantage of them, you can accomplish growth, too. But, if you say “I already know all about it”, then you stop yourself from being able to enjoy them and grow.

Martin: Yeah. Me and Neil, we do the same thing as far as daily learning, we’re on talks all day. I love this. We’re into what you’re saying. 

A few things though. Here’s what struck my mind. With your father, if that in mind, if he always has to strive and what not and you were kind of were looking at him and think that he may outlive you, does he push you at any stage and was there a relationship there as far as you’re the son, you should be doing more what you’re left than what you are?

Was that like a distant relationship that was just maybe not part of the relationship you have with him? I know you help him now. But, what was his relationship toward you? 

Manuel: The only reason that I am close to him right now is because I became a businessman. That’s the reality.  

My dad is a businessman. That’s what he is – he has a business. I can tell you, he has four kids. There are two of them that he doesn’t talk too much at all because they don’t have anything to do with his business. 

With me, I’m the closest one because I’m all over. And, I’m the one that boomed his business, took it to a whole new level, took responsibility for it, built marketing channels for it, and established it. Because of that, we’re really close. 

But, if we didn’t have the business, we didn’t talk, we weren’t close. 

Now, my dad would always be a responsible father. Whenever I needed help he would give me the help. Whenever I needed support, he would always find a way to support me. But beyond that, we didn’t have any sort of relationship. 

It’s not like I had him as a mentor or somebody driving me along the way. I didn’t really have that at all along the way not from my mom or not from my dad.

I can tell you that my mom still doesn’t even believe that I’ve become such an entrepreneur more successful than all of her kids. 

I don’t know exactly how it happened, man. I keep on looking at it. I didn’t have a mentor like that. I just didn’t have it. I have more mentors now than I did back then. I have people that I learn from every day.

There’s a guy that I’m really close with who runs a $350 million corporation. I learn from him now everyday. My corporation is only like $5 or $6 million a year at this point. So, I’d look at him and I’m like, “Whoa! There’s so much room to grow!” 

I have people and they’re incredible Amazon teachers, e-commerce guys like Ben Cummings, somebody that’s close to me and I learn from him every day. I have mentors now. I didn’t have them on my way over here so it’s not something that I can give you guys as an excuse to have. 

I had to figure out along the way how to find out things that I could learn, that could increase my value. That’s the thing that most people need to keep in mind and that’s very important. 

The money in your bank account does not determine your value. How much money you have on your account does not determine your worth in society. What determines your value is how much do you know, how much information do you have. 

Think about this for a second. Hand me that trash can for a second, please. 

This is a trash can right here. People on the podcast, you listen to this. You’ve got to visualize this. It’s a trash can. If I grab toilet paper and I need to throw it out to the trash can. I keep on throwing in here. You can squeeze a lot of paper in there, several rolls easily. 

But, there’s going to be a point in which that trash can needs to be emptied. There has to be a point. You might wonder what’s the point. It’s coming. There’s a point in which it’s inevitable or it’s going to overflow.

Trust me, I’ve been to bathrooms with overflowing trash cans. Even to my own office, I complain to my guys because I have to grab my feet and push them in and I’m like, “Guys! Come on, just pick up the bag and throw it out.”

This is the crazy thing that we all take for granted. It’s super crazy. Check this out. 

Visualize your mind as the trash can. It’s an unlimited trash can that you can put as much information as you want in it – it’s unlimited.

There’s no point in which the information overflows.  

How cool is that? 

If you want to be more successful, do you know what you have to do? You’ve got to put more information in that trash can. It’s incredible. Once you realize that simple but powerful data. Trust me, I did not read this in a book, I made this up myself. It’s logical. 

“Information determines how much success you have in life.”

We have been paying people for information for ages. Doctors are getting a lot of money. Supposedly, because they have certificates on the wall and they’re supposed to know more than anybody else. That’s why they get paid more – architects, engineers – all these guys are getting paid money and good money because they’re supposed to know more and that’s all.

So, if you want to be more successful,

don’t look at your bank account!

Look at the information in your mind.

If you need to understand how to run Facebook advertising to increase your worth, hey, come on guys, listen to a podcast on Facebook advertising, get yourself trained, buy yourself a $15 book, get some YouTube training – everything that you get for free. Understand how the platform works.

If you want to understand how to build a YouTube channel, study it, find information, increase your worth.

There’s a quote that I use a lot in my seminars from the philosopher Seneca that says what it means to be lucky. He says that

What happened to me just a real-life example, in 2014 was after a year or learning, learning, learning information, accumulating… WOW! I get it!

• I know how Amazon works!
• I know how to list a product.
• I know how to write a title, how to do images, bullet points, copyright.
• I know how to run Facebook Ads and direct people there.

I get it! What do I need to do now? I now get it. 

At that point, an opportunity was presented. A person with more money than me said, “Hey, I can put in some money for us to sell some bed sheets.” Fantastic! Let’s do it! 

Do you know what I am going to put in? I’m going to put in this information right here and that’s how I’m going to earn a partnership. 

I got 34% control in the company and I got the two other partners to own 33%.

Imagine that – without a single penny, I had more control of that company than everybody else in that company. Why? Because it was assumed that I was more valuable than all of them because I possessed the most valuable commodity in this entire universe.

K N O W L E D G E

When you have that, you win the game. 

So, the basics of success for anybody out there is accumulating enough knowledge until you succeed in something.

Now, sure! You might be telling me, “Wait for a second, Manuel. There are billions of pieces out there that people are teaching. How do I learn? What and who’s teaching the wrong information? Who’s trying to just take my money?” 

Well, that’s part of the research. You’ve got to find out who’s good. 

I can tell you that I am honest, I am hardworking, my content is all about giving real, actionable and practical stuff that you people can implement.

Do you want to find out about Facebook Ads? Do you want to find out about social media marketing? About marketing? Well, go ahead and follow me and consume my content. It’s all free.

At some point, maybe you trust me enough that you want to join my program so you can go down a road map. 

Find somebody on Amazon that’s going to teach you things. Find somebody on e-commerce that is going to teach you things. Study their content.

Do you want to find out how to rank your listings on Google? Go and find this guy, Neil Patel. He’s an incredible teacher. Do you want to find out about Shopify? Go and get Ezra Firestone and consume all his content.

Guys, we have a vault of information out there that is accessible to increase your value that will eventually lead to opportunities.

It’s that powerful. That’s just basically the basics of success that most people fail to implement. They keep on looking for these weird opportunities or this hitting the lotto, that miracle product is going to make him a billionaire or this invention.

Those are the things that we need to address and that’s the difference between a winning entrepreneur and a losing entrepreneur – somebody that can actually recognize these opportunities and learn the right things and just jump all over them so they can take advantage of them. That’s all. 

Manuel: You got it. That’s a good point right there, Neil. That’s a good point right there because why are you going to try to invent the next Amazon? Amazon is already there and it already has 50% of every dollar spent on the internet. Why not learn how to utilize it? 

Why are you trying to figure out what the next Facebook is or invent the next Facebook app?  Why not figure out how to use it and take advantage of existing platforms to be able to monetize and grow your business? Learn how to get your message created and get it distributed so people can see it and you can get more attention which is going to lead to more business for yourself.  

Martin: It’s interesting. I worked for LinkedIn, Shopify Plus and all of these so not a stranger to what you’re saying in many ways and forms. I love hearing it.

It is just the fact that people pay for the road map as you said but also like convenience. And that’s why I go back to it’s not for everybody as far as understanding that the moment you had, you were also plus 30 before, it all of a sudden dawned on you and it’s kind of like Pandora’s box opened and you were like, okay, knowledge is wealth. But, at the end of the day, there’s nothing else, that’s all I do and accumulate – knowledge, knowledge.

But, most people unfortunately just don’t reach that. You were back then to a corner, right? And then, it appeared to his face that there’s a working fault in the beginning. It might have been a bad thing happening was a blessing in disguise.

That’s what I see for a lot of people is that they get comfortable. You have your safety 9-5 jobs – there’s a paycheck coming in. 

What you’re talking about spreading us message, I think a lot of people will hear it and they will hear the words. But, I think until they really become in a situation where they have to understand it and get it in their heart, that’s the funny thing about this. 

I’ve consulted a lot of people, helped a lot of people and they will just pay for convenience but they won’t finish the course. They won’t implement it until the back end to the corner.

I really love hearing your message but also think that it’s a big, big curtain for a lot of people – “Yeah, yeah. But I have the safety of the job. That will keep me afloat.” 

So, they will never have to go to the lengths of what you’re teaching. More of just a thought than necessarily just a question. But that’s why I’ve seen as well as people have to be forced into success many times. 

That decision is first. 

Just going back to the subject of knowledge, you’ve got to first decide that you want to be successful and then you follow it along with implementation of study routines to increase your worth by learning new things. That’s the process.

Martin: Manuel, listen. Now, this is where it’s going to be fun for me and Neil and to whoever is listening. I heard of this as far as the mindset goes like, “You chose Facebook Messenger. That’s the one you’ve put like a lot of knowledge and I know your agency does various tasks within it. But, I would love for you to take us to school now about why Messenger Marketing specifically and what do you foresee in the future? Any golden nuggets you can say this is how I survive and this is what is valuable?

So the floor is yours once again. 

It’s common sense, right? If I give you an analogy, a simple one. If you have to participate in a fishing competition and your job is to catch as many fish as possible, let’s say that you get presented with two lakes and you’ve got to choose one, you’re also getting information about that lake – dimensions and how many fish in each one – you’re obviously going to choose the one that has the greatest possibility of catching fish. What is the thing that is going to determine that? Quite obviously, how many fish did you have in the lake. 

For those of you guys that want to get super technical, how about if only one person goes to the other lake and on this one, there are a thousand fishermen? That’s a factor. 

Let’s say that we have the same amount of people on both sides fishing on that lake. I’m going to go to the one that has the most fish. 

Why is that the case? Because this is the universal law – the more people, the more elements, the more fish you have in a certain area, the more possibility of leveraging that attention whether you’re a fish, whether you’re a human, whether you’re an animal, no matter what. If you are able to coral people at a higher degree, larger quantity, then you can win the game. 

What I figured out a few years ago which again happened accidentally… I am one of the top Messenger experts on the planet right now. I can say that right now, I’m feeling confident about it.

My agency, myself, we won what they call the Most Engaging Bot. Meaning, literally we got the best bot because it’s the one that produces the most engagements, interactions and we built a channel which has close to a million people now that we have the biggest pond, we built the biggest lake of fish.  

I have reviewed this process many times. The reason why my dad’s Messenger channel did not win was that it’s a Latin American channel. 

These guys in ManyChat, they don’t speak Spanish. They speak Russian and they speak English. 

I did the same thing. My dad’s Messenger channel was first. That’s the first one that I built. That Messenger channel, I created strategies on social media to leverage attention on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, email. All I did was I constantly flooded the Messenger Channel. I brought people into the Messenger Channel.

Once they came inside that channel, some people call it a channel, some people call it a bot. My preferred word is a channel because it’s a place for me to be able to put something on a line that is going to be seen by people and for me to produce a response. That’s a channel.

Martin: Two-way. That’s the thing. 

Manuel: There’s a two-way communication here where people can ask questions, I get human interaction. And then, otherwise, they get a lot of interaction with the actual content and they get education and information.

They get very engaged with the content in it. 

We grab content which you must have. If you are planning on creating a Facebook Messenger Channel but you at the same time are not planning on creating content, then, you shouldn’t even go there, don’t create it. 

When I talk about content, I’m talking about videos, copy, writing articles and doing podcasts.

I generated a lot of business for my agency by capturing attention on social media, on podcasts, social, YouTube channels, etc. I put my information out there, I pull attention in, and then I can do something with that attention. 

I get email subscribers and Messenger subscribers and then I’m able to generate business. 

So social media, Messenger, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook – all of these platforms require that you create a content strategy, content that is going to be valuable to somebody else. 

Now you work on getting it seen by people by understanding the distribution of that content. That’s where people fail. They think that just by creating content should be enough. No, because social media today more than ever requires that you pay to play. 

You need to be able to advertise in it to get more attention.

So, you need to know how to be able to distribute that content to get it seen.

Now, you can leverage it to bring it into your own world. 

Messenger, the way that I structure it is I grab content and I create the channel. Sequences, interaction, mini-courses, resources, menus with an invitation to go and visit the website, to download something, and I do all that good stuff in that channel.

It’s like writing a book, right?

You’re not going to sell the book unless you write it first. 

Once I have it ready, then, I can bring people into that channel, nurture, educate and provide value.

By doing so, I earn the right to sell them something. 

I don’t believe I have the right to sell to somebody

unless I’ve given them something of value first – a resource, information, training – something. 

I don’t sell to anybody that I haven’t had enough energy at nurturing them first, educating them and providing value. This is the path on any Messenger Channel that I have seen successful and I have done it better than anybody else.

What I’ve done is I’ve built it intuitively with the idea that “Hey, if I want to win in this game, I need to capture attention. If I want to capture attention, I need to give them something interesting for them to want to pay attention to.”

That’s how I do it. That leads me to be able to promote things and sell them things because I have that ATTENTION.

That is a 5-minute explanation of a Facebook Messenger Channel.

Martin: I love it! So, one thing that came into my mind that I wrote it down so I won’t forget is about a lot of you who may not have the luxury of time of actually being able to do and fail a lot so quick, did you study a lot of these things, Manuel? Or did you have the luxury of actually going out and failing a lot to pick this up? Or how did you come about that you now say, “I want to provide value first”?

Beforehand, was that a case that you may be started with direct selling and then you’re like, “Oops! Nobody’s biting on this hook that I have in the water.” Or, I’m just curious about what you’re opposing towards the learning curve.

For some reason, as a marketer, I didn’t look at it as a television platform, a radio, a magazine, or a newspaper. I saw it as a channel for us to capture attention and bring people into our world that will give me a chance to sell them something in the back-end. 

I never went too aggressive since I started, direct selling, anything, or generating leads for example for NaturalSlim which is our international weight loss business. 

We generate leads but only leads of people that have engaged with the content that has seen my dad’s content on social across social platforms. That’s how we do it. 

Martin: You didn’t have as far as studying now? Now, you have mentors and all of these things. I’ll be very curious about for when your Amazon venture started. 

Did you start gaining all this confidence and start to like get those moments? 

What was the time spent from before you really started picking up and going like, “Okay. Now, I’m starting. It’s opening up for me. Now, I need mentors. Now it is. From Amazon until you started the agency…

when did the pen drop for you?

I never looked for a mentor.

Just like I told you, my mentors, I just started getting connected now with some of these big guys that I’m big enough now that they want to have me close because I provided value to them.

I have a big mentor that happens to pay me a lot of money to work for him even though I will probably pay him to work for him just because he’s that guy. But, I never had that thing. 

I studied as I have explained to you guys. I studied Ben Cummings. I studied Jason Fladlein. And, I studied some of these guys.

When it comes to Facebook advertising on social, I went on my own, I figured things out. There wasn’t enough training. 

The one thing that I did do was there was free training by Facebook on a program called, a certification, called the Facebook Blueprint.

If you go to a Facebook Page, you can search for Facebook Blueprint and you’re going to see a Facebook Page. There’s a lot of training there. 

I did a lot of that. I got certified as a Facebook Buying Professional, as a Facebook Planning Professional. That’s when it comes to Facebook but it was just that training that I did at that point.

I started to take off probably six months into aggressively building my Amazon brand in my spare time as I think of.

And then, the next year, I aggressively worked towards being able to quit my job and just focus on my Amazon brand. That eventually happened 9 months into that. 

It took me about a year of working in the mornings, working at night times, four or five hours every single day on the weekends,  not going out on parties or not wasting my time on bench watching shows or playing angry birds or any of that stuff. 

I was aggressively doing that until I was able to quit my job and just focused on that. 

How is it now to have gone to all of a sudden have people working under you? How did you learn about selecting the right people and scaling that up because I imagined that’s a whole another book to read and start learning about. What was your approach to that?          

Manuel: I did a podcast on this. I haven’t talked about my podcast but it’s called the Facebook Marketing Ninja podcast. There’s a podcast episode which was done a few months ago which is called how I went from 3 to 47 staff and that’s what it’s called.

I went to a company called 24/7 VA. It’s a company that I reached out to and they gave me some resumes of people and I picked one. I liked that person and gave him a job. He started helping me.  

What they did was they shadowed me, they mirrored me, they followed me around for months. Meaning that I was always sharing my screen when I was working. I was always having them on a call, they will see every single thing that I did from creating a campaign on Facebook to creating a PPC campaign on Amazon to creating a listing to doing a Shopify channel to reaching suppliers and talking to them.

Anything that I did, I had them look at what I was doing and learn from me. This person ended up being a very productive individual so I got lucky. They worked with me for about 4 years. They just quit about a year and a half ago and we were friends.

He quit because he felt he felt he was ready to take on his own business which I was proud of him. He learned so much.

He worked for me for years, he became really valuable, he learned a lot and he was really good. 

So, I just figured out a system for training people. The way that you would do it is you document every single thing that you do, always record your screen, always write the actions that you do, the steps that they call the SOP’s, standard operating procedures of every single thing that you do. 

You create a knowledge base, you create a training center to educate your people on what you do every day. If you do that, you can build a team. Now, I have about 25 people in the Philippines. I have 15 people here locally now. I have another 14 that are spread out from Europe. I’ve got people from Croatia, Greece, Mexico, all over the place and other parts of the United States.

WE HAVE SYSTEMS IN PLACE TO TRAIN THEM. That’s the key. 

“The key is to never be the only one good at something.“

When you know how to do something and you know you’re successful, DOCUMENT IT. 

When you bring somebody else in, SHOW THEM what you do and LET THEM DO IT, LET THEM GET BETTER.

Either they make it or they don’t. 

I can tell you that I have had to fire a lot of people because they don’t have the energy, they don’t have the drive, and they’re not a good match.

One thing that I’ve learned throughout the years is it’s okay for you to bring people in fast only as long as you’re able to get rid of them fast, too. If they come in, they don’t do well, and you don’t like the flow, you can just get rid of them as soon as possible. That’s what I would do. Just don’t hold on to people just because you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings or any of that stuff. 

Martin: I love it. Thank you for sharing that. You just said goal. I’ve got to ask you. How do you go about goal setting? Do you have one big one that you’re commending to us or do you do the Amazon goal, Messenger goal, or what are we going towards? Where’s the big one if you can share?

Manuel: My job in this company right now is to be the big thinker here. I always have to think about what our next year is going to look like. I’m so much the big thinking. And then, I have a lot of guys in the individual departments establishing the goals for the departments. I’m going to approve those goals and just make sure that I help them along the way to also get them there.

But, I’m always thinking about next month, next year, what are we going to do so we can keep on growing. One successful action that I did which I’ll tell you that is that before I had anybody else which is myself… In this, you can probably go back to a lot of successful entrepreneurs – Grant Cardone, this guy talks about every single day setting your goals, every single day.

Write down a list of everything that you want to accomplish that day, write down a list of everything that you want to accomplish in the next 30 days, in the next 90 days, and in the next year.

Just keep that up to date and always push yourself to the next level. 

The next day, you move things that you were able to get done and the other ones you move into the next day. In that way, you keep on pushing yourself to the next level. 

There’s this guy. I was on his podcast last year. His name is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire. I don’t know if you’ve heard about him before but..

Manuel: Yeah, he has a very big podcast. Entrepreneur on Fire, it’s one of the biggest business podcasts in the world. He came out with a book and this is before I was anything, before I was successful. He came out with a book and a journal and he called it the Freedom Journal. The idea was to have consistent visualization of your goals and I thought that it was a great idea. He had a kick-starter campaign and I invested in buying 3 books back then. It was $100, something like that. 

You can probably buy these books on Amazon and they’re called Freedom Journals.

The crazy thing was the goals that I put in there, six months later, ACCOMPLISHED. A year later, WAY MORE THAN ACCOMPLISHED.

So, that thing WORKS!

If you keep on putting your mind to a particular goal,

if you keep on putting attention there,

you will continue getting closer and closer. It’s inevitable. 

This is my own philosopher from my own church. He taught me that there is no such thing as failure.

What does exist is lack of persistence.

That’s what exists. When somebody wants to succeed at something, even if he fails many times, if he wants to try it again, HE CAN. He can continue to try until he succeeds.

Anybody out there has the same power. You can continue trying things until you become successful.

Entrepreneurship is almost like being a baseball player. If you get on base three out of ten times, if you get to hit the ball correctly and get home, that doesn’t happen that much. 

But, when it does happen, you’re a superstar.

Entrepreneurship is similar, like that. If you get to do business and you’re successful three out of ten times, you’re a winner. 

That’s a good thing. That’s on e-commerce, Amazon, brick and mortar, service, podcast, training, whatever it is, it applies. It’s not going to be 9 out of 10. That’s not the reality of business. 

Just look at the stats. 95% of businesses do not make it past 5 years. 95% of businesses. 

It’s a reality that most businesses that are being created today, 95 out of 100 businesses that are created today will not exist in 5 years. It’s the truth! 

Martin: I see you, Manuel, doing that. Just one thing on personal branding and I see you kind of co-exist in both real realms. I see the manuelsuarez.com training and I also see the agmagency.com and seeing that you’re setting yourself up or anything or a few things to just have that part of your marketing plan. I love seeing that as well. It’s definitely on the ball here specifically. 

What you’re saying, like I love that it doesn’t go, it doesn’t fail. What was the five thousand times is how you look…

Neil: Ten thousand to think.

Manuel: That’s right.  

Martin: That kind of quote. Now we’ve talked a lot about your successes and what people have to do, what is the hardest thing about being as successful as you’ve been in such a short time? Or, what’s the worst thing that’s tough? What’s the shadow side to all this sunny thing that we’ve been talking about? 

So, that could also be a hard thing to build a team of people around you that trusts you and that have a drive comparable to yours because as a leader, you can’t expect everybody to have the same passion. It doesn’t make sense especially since you’re the owner but it’s a challenge.

I’ve had a lot of people. I’ve had a lot of difficulties with employees in the past. I’ve given the power to people that I shouldn’t have given the power to and they have affected the business. That has been an issue for me along the way.   

Now, if you were to ask me if I have any regrets about what I’ve done, absolutely not – no regrets. 

I think that any challenges that I’ve had along the way are challenges that every single one of them has helped me grow, get better, and get more experience. 

I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if I haven’t gone through those challenges. If it would have been all super simple and put in a silver platter, I get to a higher level and now I experience those things and those issues that crashes are way, way, way more damaging. 

The higher you get, the bigger the crashes are.

That’s the way it is. 

If you go up a building and you go to the balcony on the 4th floor, there’s a certain amount of impact that you’re going to get.

Now, you keep on going up, go to the 10th floor and trust me your impact is going to be quite, quite harder, right? 

The same thing in business.

As you grow, the attacks get bigger, the people that are attacking you, people that are haters, the ones that don’t believe in you, criticize, or complain, they get louder. But also at the same time, the mistakes can be way more damaging than at the bottom. That’s all part of it. 

I’d rather experience things at the bottom, make a lot of mistakes at the bottom, that in the future when I’m up there I already know what I went through and I know I wouldn’t repeat it because I already went through it. 

So, I think it’s a great thing. I love going through these problems and making mistakes.

Even though they bother me because I don’t like going through these things. Once I get through them, I look back and I appreciate the fact that I went through that because it just makes me that much better.

Martin: Awesome answer. This thing about you have to be thick skin definitely. I can imagine the amount of noise coming in your way and I see that you have to probably roll with the punches much more. So, I can appreciate that.

Manuel, I won’t take more of your time. This has been absolutely fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time out here. I have one final question, an eye finisher question as we started. You have your platforms and you’re good at talking. You see, I’m not expecting you to answer but maybe we can get something out of you… 

Is there a question you never get asked that you would like to answer? 

Manuel: Is there a question that I never get asked that I would like to answer?

Well, what is my drive, what makes me go every single day, what makes me wake up in the morning and be excited about the day – I never get asked about that question! 

It’s an important question. It’s definitely an important one. 

Martin: Yeah. Do you mind answering it? 

Manuel: Yeah absolutely. I believe that it’s so cliche, Martin. It’s so cliche. But for me, I’m at the point right now in which I feel like I have woken up and there’s no turning back. 

Seven years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago, I had no wish for greatness. I only wanted to live life and enjoy it and try to get as much as possible as I could from it.

strong burning desire for greatness

I think that a part of why I have that feeling right now and why I’m going through that right now and why I’m going through that right now is because I didn’t realize the POWER that I had. 

Back then, I didn’t know I was powerful, I was able and competent. I didn’t know that I would drive the energy of so many people. I didn’t believe that I could be a leader like I am right now, and I have people.

Sometimes I have moments and I think about it

I try to let it sink in. Sometimes I’m like, “Wow, is this really happening? Am I the leader for all these people under me?” These people all look up to me, they depend on me. They all are wondering what my next step is.

Whatever I say, they say yes sir. And that’s incredible. So, I have a soldier under me ready to go to battle at all times. I got an army of people under me and that for me drives me every single day now. 

The way that I’m looking at it right now is that I’m just getting started, I’m growing really fast, I’m getting big effects accomplished across anything that I do, I got more and more people that want to get closer to me and have me help them.

Because of that, my goals have expanded. And now, I’m shooting for greatness. What I didn’t even dream about 7 years ago, it’s part and parcel of my beingness every day and it drives me every day.   

I want to make sure that when I hit 60, 50 or 70 years old, I want to make sure that my kids can look back and be like,

“Wow! I’m so proud of dad. Look at what he’s done. Look at the lives that he has changed. Look at the empire that he has created.” 

That is power. I have that fire in me right now, something that I didn’t have most of my life. 

Seven years ago, this was all unreal.

Today, it drives me every day and it gets me excited to go to the next level and accomplish greatness. There is no particular endpoint. It’s not like there’s an end to this race, there’s not a finish line.

For me, it’s like the idea of getting through this – the process, the energy every single day that we put forward. That’s what drives me every day and I enjoy doing that more than anything. It’s fun, it’s exciting.

Again, doing what you love, there’s nothing like it. Every philosopher throughout time has talked about that from Socrates to all these guys: “Do what you love and you’ll never work another day.”

This guy, Zig Ziglar, he’s talked about that – do what you love.

If you can figure out that thing that you’re passionate about that puts you on fire,

then, what a great life that is!

When I get to the end of my life, I’m going to feel like I did everything I could to enjoy and have a great life instead of regretting what I could have done. That’s my drive every day.   

Martin: There are so many questions that merit on to that but I would say that we’re finishing on this. I bet you’re thinking the same. Manuel, if there’s a chance, I’m inviting back you in the future. We’ll see if we can make that happen.

Manuel: Absolutely! How many podcasts have you guys done now? 

Martin: You are our 18th episode. So, we’re fresh out of the boat and no plans to stop. Everything you’ve been saying here, I’ve just been loving hearing it. There’s so much to pull from it. This is partly only one of the things we’re doing as well like yourself. This is going to be a vehicle to network.

Neil: Before I forget my questions, three things I’ve picked up that I kind of just want to say again for the audience.

I. One of them is the fact that you hit a breaking point, you have filed bankruptcy and many people when that happens, they shut down, they’ll stop drinking or whatever. They will just collapse. But, if you push yourself, you can create great things from that. So, it’s kind of that fight or not kind of thing. 

II. The second part that I’ve found very interesting is, I mean you’re a big name. You’ve got awards for your Messenger bot but you’re also telling us that there’s a $350 million a year guy. So, even then, you’re a small fish competitive. That’s a massive market for anyone that’s interested in getting involved in this.

III. The third thing that I found very interesting is if someone wants to do what you do, they can come to work with you and learn everything you do, take all that knowledge, learn as much as they can from themselves as your assistant did.

Manuel: I call it getting closer to the sun. You want to make sure that you take advantage of the opportunities out there, get close to people that are doing it out there and learn from them. 

Neil: And pay attention and take everything in. Don’t just do your 9-5 and go home. Learn as a sponge. So, I just want to bring those best for the audience. 

ice break question:

“You’ve made a lot of money. If you could pick anywhere to live in the world, where would you go?” 

Manuel: You know what? I’ve been to a lot of places now. A lot of places!

There are places that I still have on my bucket list like South Africa.

I can’t think about many that I haven’t gotten yet but maybe Brazil.I would like to check that out.

But to live, if I can pick anywhere in the world, where would I live?

I never thought about that question but I’m going to say that Puerto Rico will be my island. I was born and raised over there. It’s a beautiful island. 

If I could pick anywhere in the world, I actually can. Let’s be honest. I’m at the point in which I live anywhere I want to. The question right now is I don’t know how much the cost of living in Dubai is. 

I’m going in December to go to Dubai. I know it’s an expensive place. But I believe that with what I make right now, I can live anywhere in the world.

The thing about it is that…

When you have a family, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. IT’S ABOUT THEM!

I wanted to go and live in Dallas but my kids refuse to live in Dallas. That’s where the Dallas Cowboys are at, I got my wife from Texas, and a lot of reasons why I was going to live there. 

So, I ended up living in Clearwater, Florida, and that’s because that’s where the family wanted to live. 

If I were a single man willing to just go and live anywhere, I’ll probably go and land in Puerto Rico myself and just live there by myself with a beautiful beach property and just be comfortable there because I love that environment, I love the weather, and I love the island. 

That was my choice but I stopped thinking about myself a long time ago, Neil. Now, I think about the rest of the people important around me. So, that’s a good question. I wasn’t prepared for that one.  

Martin: Manuel, thank you so much. For everybody that’s listening, I’ll link every place. You can check out Manuel at manuelsuarez.com, manuelsuareztraining.com. You’ve got the agency. You can find them on agmagency.com. 

I know you have a podcast. You’re basically everywhere. You’ve got the omnipresence going so I will be linking everything for everyone there. I know that they’re also more than welcome to reach out to you on the Messenger bot that I see popping up on the websites. 

This has been really enlightening. Thank you so much for taking the time out for a small fish like us here at the beginning of the journey. I truly appreciate it so thank you so much.

Manuel: Once upon a time, I WAS THERE. I appreciate it very much. I’ll keep going. 

Neil: Thank you for joining us!