DESCRIPCIÓN DEL PODCAST
In this podcast, I tell my story of how I went from 3 to 47 staff in just a couple of years. The importance of taking care of your staff, how to help them grow and continue expanding their abilities.
Your staff is more important than your clients. Without them, you don’t have a real business. Here’s my successful system for scaling your business through hiring.
If you’re ready to hire your first or your next staff, I recommend you try out this platform: freeeup.com/manuelsuarez
ARCHIVO DEL PODCAST
How I Went From 3 to 47 Staff and How You Can Do It Too
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DESCRIPCIÓN DEL PODCAST
All right. Welcome to the Facebook Marketing Ninja Podcast once again. It has been a while since I have been in here. I’m excited to be back here. I had a last few weeks that were very, very intense travelling all over the world doing a conference for Dr. Berg in Washington and the big launch which you guys I know, that if you’re listening to this podcast, chances are that you have heard about the launch that I had on my Facebook Masters Program. That’s now in the books and we’ve got hundreds of people going to the program and I’m excited about that and now I’m here with you. Today, in this podcast session we are going to talk about something that is very, very near and dear to my heart and I think a lot of you guys might need some help in this area because this is a very, very underutilized area that people need to pay attention to. That is building an organization of staff, of people, of human beings that help you implement all the activities that you need to implement to expand your business in this social media world.
What people don’t realize is that they need to be able to actually master an area and then hand it over to somebody else to do it for them. Otherwise, they never scale and grow. For example, I am a Facebook marketer, right? I do Facebook advertising. I have built myself throughout the last several years some incredible businesses and I have helped other clients build some incredible businesses by mastering Facebook advertising. Do you know how many actual campaigns I create myself on a daily basis? Zero. I don’t. Why? Because I have scaled myself and that allows me to think in other areas to expand my reach into other areas that I know are going to help my business keep expanding along the way. As you grow in business, as you build your own businesses, as you establish product lines, brands, listings, e-commerce platforms, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Instagram followings, and you do all your content and all those things, you’ve got to realize that you need to segment your work along the way – you just segment your activities along the way so you can hand them over to different departments every single time. In that way, you get to build a real business and you become a real executive of your company that is keeping the company looking up and always expanding and growing along the way.
That’s something that needs to be utilized. And, today, more than ever we have opportunities to rescale a team to be able to create a massive impact across the brand. Let me give you an example and I’ll example myself. I’m going to start off with that to make it real how I am not just talking here. I walked this exact path a couple of years ago and I have been able to build this incredible business that has all these people under me that now are not just employees of mine. The people that work for me, my staff, they feel like they’re a part of something special, a movement. They feel like their company is their family. I have helped them survive better, I have helped them improve the quality of their lives and overall, their lives are better everywhere because of their experience of working with a company like my own company that is so concentrated on helping them improve their own lives.
Let me tell you one thing. For me, even though I have a lot of clients, I service a lot of people, and I sell a lot of products… this might be countering to a lot of people, all right? Like the old saying, “The customer is always right. A customer to me is not more important than one of my staff members. It’s simply not more important and would never be more important. If you don’t have your staff members expanding with you, if you don’t have them achieving their dreams and their goals, if you don’t have them accomplishing what they want out of your job, out of the job you have given them, your company doesn’t grow in the same way that it could. My job is to keep my staff winning all the time and feeling like they’re accomplishing greatness within their own areas. That’s something that I would have you guys focused a lot on. So, in that way, you have a team of people that have this drive, this energy that are helping each other along the way and are pushing towards higher levels and new levels of ability and skill. That by itself is power in the making.
So, that’s something that I want to tell you guys. In reality, you want to scale this team but you want to scale this team by building an organization that really cares about the survival of this team. Let me tell you a story. Back in 2014, I created a business. I was already learning about advertising. I developed a passion and a dream for being able to capture attention. I became interested in the subject of using the internet and the social media world to capture attention. I thought it was fascinating that I looked around everywhere and I saw people using Facebook, Instagram, all these platforms, actively buying on Amazon and it was such an incredible phenomenon to observe. So I’ve got obsessed with it. What did I do? I’ve got together with a partner of mine. His name is Ernesto, he’s a really good friend of mine, he’s like my brother, also. He still works with me today in the agency. We got together and I said, “Look. That business that you’re doing, you’re selling bedsheets on the road. (They call them road siders, okay?) That business that you’re doing, I want to take it online because I think there’s an opportunity with it.” He was doing bedsheets at that point. We got together with another guy who’s another friend of mine and we built this multi-million dollar empire that was doing about $600,000 in sales within its first year and a half. Within the first eighteen months, we were doing $600,000 in sales already, monthly. Okay? Six million dollar in sales in the second year, okay? So, I was doing that by myself without any help and it got to a point that I became so overwhelmed that I knew I was not going to be able to grow anymore. That was the end of the road for me.
I hit the point, even though I was growing very fast, has some good systems in place, has some great knowledge and I was implementing social media advertising into the brands, I was actually accomplishing a lot of good stuff along the way. I had just taken on my dad as a customer who right now is a major social media superstar with my help. I was doing other smaller things but I remember that I was outside my office back in 2015 towards the end of it, just a short two and a half years ago, I looked at my partner and I said, “Ernesto, it’s time for us to get more help. We somehow need to figure out how to scale and get helped. I know all throughout all this time I’ve been thinking that nobody can do our job, nobody can do my job as good as I do it. So, it’s impossible for me to get somebody to run my Facebook ads, my advertising, my campaigns, my Amazon optimization, my graphics, my listings, my copywriting, my websites. I cannot get somebody to do that. I’ve got to do it all myself because I’m just really good at it and nobody’s going to be really good at it.” The moment that you get outside of that thinking, the moment that you step outside the box and you think for a second, “Wait for for a second”, there’s only a certain amount of things that I can do within my time, within my body, within my activities, and my life. I’m not going to be able to grow unless I get myself out of this condition.
So, I actually started looking for companies to help me find people. The first one that I’ve found was a company called 24/7 VA. You can look it up online, 24/7 VA. I haven’t used it for a long time. I’m not using it anymore. I’ve got a better option for you, guys, which I’ll talk about them in a second. I started looking for a person and I was lucky enough that the first person that I found is still with me today which is incredible. His name is Jay and he’s an incredible human being, an individual that has grown with me by leaps and bounds every year. When he started with me he wasn’t 10% of what he is today. I just saw a potential just like I had a potential when I started learning about Facebook ads. I mean I remember going to a convention not knowing anything about Facebook. I had this guy who’s a mentor of mine and his name is Ben Cummings. He’s a good friend of mine, too. He was showing us some stuff about running Facebook advertising and I was blown away, and I didn’t know anything about that. So, at some point I learn from people. I don’t have to find that whole thing about “Tell me your experience. I want to see your resume.” Guys, that’s bias because in reality, you’ve got to look at what the person is and you’ve got to sense them, you’ve got to feel them. Is their intention good? Do they know how to communicate with you? Do they know how to talk and get their message out there to you? Do they know how to spread their emotions? Do they show you a passion? Do they want to accomplish greatness? Do they want to accomplish special things in life? What are their goals, ambitions and aspirations? What are they doing right now? Understand more about that. How lazy are they? Look at their phone, main screen. Do they have only YouTube and Facebook and no productivity? Look at what they are doing in their lives and judge them by what they are right now, not where they’ve been, not what they’ve studied, but trust them by their intention to help you right now. If you have that, there is so much experience, there are so many things that you can get them along the way, so much education, so many courses, so much trainings that you have access, so many podcasts, so many books that you can build this human being into a monster, monster help for you. So much so that some of the guys in my company that I have right now that I’ve scaled starting with that one person, his name is Jay, still with me today, my little brother that I’ve helped him grow like crazy and he’s grown like crazy. I would even say that he has helped me grow along the way. That person is such a special individual that along the way, you’re not going to find everybody to be special, guys. It is impossible. How easy would it be if everybody that you’ve brought in to the picture, if everybody that you’ve hired ended up being a genius? That will be a piece of cake but that is not the reality. That is just a dream.
So, in reality, guys, you have to understand that most people are not going to be great. I have hired hundreds of people obsessively in the last year and a half or two and I have only kept 40 of them. I have a company now with 47 staff. Most of them are overseas but they are my people and I help them grow, I help them increase their income, I help them expand and accomplish their dreams and goals along the way. All that I did was find a few good one, build them up, give them trainings, give them the tools, and along the way keep on adding more people. It became a viral thing and now I have a line up of hundreds of people that want to be a part of my company. You’ve got to start with one and get them close to you and get them groomed along the way.
Now, little by little, I started with one and this person became really important to me. I gave him training on Amazon, I showed him how to do product research, I showed him how to use tools like Jungle Scout, like Helium 10, understand Amazon Seller Central, I showed him about Shopify, how to create listings on Shopify, how to run Facebook ads. I showed him about all these different things along the way, little by little one thing and I taught them and I made sure they understood it before I moved on.
Before I move on to the subject, let me tell you one thing that I see entrepreneurs constantly make a mistake with and I see it a lot on lazy entrepreneurs. I’m sorry if you’re one of them but this is a reality and I’m into speaking truth to you because I want you guys to understand this and change the state of operation. Most entrepreneurs fail in hiring and also fail in scaling a team because instead of learning a subject themselves and teaching it to their employees, to their freelancers, to their staff members or whatever, what they do is that they actually hire somebody else to do it, run my social media advertising, run my Facebook ads, run my Instagram account, post my content, do my Amazon account, my YouTube optimization, write my emails. “I don’t know anything about it but I’m going to make sure that you do it for me even though I don’t know exactly if you’re doing a good job or not.” And they hand it over to somebody and they don’t have a clue whether they’re doing a good job or not. That is a weakness. Before you hand over the job to somebody, make sure you master it. For example, if you want to penetrate social media, if you want to run Facebook advertising, understand how it works, please, get webinars done, listen to my podcast, listen to trainings, read books, watch videos, see my mini-courses, my trainings, anything that you can do to understand the basics and the foundation of it, the philosophy why it works, how it works, how to measure ROI, how to do all that stuff. It’s important for you to understand as an entrepreneur and as a leader, what are the important metrics that you need to measure before you hand it over. If you want to educate your staff on creating Amazon listings, make sure they do it under your own tutorials, like under your own tutor lodge, you show them how to get it done. You learn it yourself and then you show them and you put it into a system that you write step-by-step how to get it done. That’s one thing that you guys should do right now. If you have activities that you’re doing, make a list of them and individually write out each one what it consists of what you do and how you do it. And, if possible, you grab applications like loom, like zoom, like skype, like camtasia, and all these different platforms. You record your screen, you document your screen while you’re doing certain activities that you know you do really well.
Do you understand the power of that? Remember guys, this whole cloud phenomenon has been around for only a few years. In order for you to help somebody understand what you were doing before, you have to train them live because otherwise, you don’t have a library of education, of the things that you do every single day that you can spread with your new staff to show them how to get something done. One thing that we have ourselves set up that has been very successful is we have a training library of all the different subjects, how to get it done directly from the stores, what are the successful actions on each one of those things, and how does Manuel Suarez does them. I have a training step-by-step for my staff on implementing all the things that I know I am good at – how to write copywriting, how to do a Facebook ad, how to do a lead generation ad, how to create a Shopify channel, how to write an email, how to write the copywriting on your Facebook ads, how to do an Instagram post, how to do a square video, basically endless, how to create a listing on Amazon, how to optimize your keywords, how to write a title. All of those things, guys, are a part of what you did to do as an entrepreneur in order for you to be able to scale your team because once you do that, all you’re going to do is like, “You, thank you very much. Come over here, I’m going to give you some work. You are going to come and work for me. I am going to pay you $3 an hour, $7 an hour, $10 an hour, and you have a potential to earn bonus and increase your salary along the way. Welcome to the team. Now, you’re going to be a Facebook advertiser. So, what I want you to do as a first step, every single day, half of your time is going to be spent on reading and watching that information. Okay, here you go. Here’s the access. Congratulations. You’ve been given access to the training. Go and train on it. Show me what you are doing. Let’s get in a call and I want to see what you are doing live.” And you train them and you help them get better along the way.
It doesn’t become an expense to you. It becomes an investment because these people out there want to help you and they want to see you grow. Understand that entrepreneurs are only a few of us in the planet. Most people out there are not entrepreneurs. Most people are not number 1s or number 2s. Most people out there are number 4s, number 5s, number 10s, number 20s, number 50s and they want to help number 1s like me to be able to expand so that they can ride the wave with us because they know that if I grow, they grow. So they compliment them. These guys are not going to come in here and do a podcast. Most of them are not going to do that. But, I’m going to help them and get better and maybe down the line they will because in reality, guys, I have been travelling this road for many years. My path towards becoming an entrepreneur didn’t start 2 years ago. It started in 2006 and it’s been going on for about 12 years now. I’ve been travelling on the road, I’ve been learning from people, I’ve been going to conferences, I’ve been listening to podcasts, I’ve been reading books, training, watching videos – all those stuff, I’ve been doing those forever before I actually got in front of a camera to talk to you, guys, or in front of a microphone to talk to the world about what I’ve done. I have been doing it, I am the one actually accomplishing all those things so then I talk. I hate those people who are actually just out there talking without doing anything. I mean somebody that has an agency, let’s say for example somebody that runs an Amazon agency. They’re saying, “I’m going to scale your business and help you sell $1 million a month.” Okay, have you done it? Have you done it yourself? No? Then, what are you talking about? “I’m going to help you expand your business.” Do you have any business yourself? Then, what are you talking about? It doesn’t make any sense. What is all these guys talking about helping you when they haven’t done it themselves? Don’t fall prey to any of that stuff, guys. Don’t fall prey to any of it because it’s all bias. You need to listen to the ones that have done it, to the ones that are doing it. Those are the guys that you need to pay attention to and pay close attention to because the rest of them are trying to take advantage of you and that’s not right. That’s simply motivation to get your money, not motivation to help. Sure! I make money. I take money from you, guys. I sell you my courses, I sell you my services. But, first and foremost, I have an intention to help you and make you better. So, in reality, you want to be building yourself along the way, making yourself better, discovering new abilities and documenting those abilities by video, by audio, by writing, and letting your people know when they come in, “Oh, you’re going to start writing emails? Okay, let me show you how that works. Here’s an exact video that shows you what I do when I log in to Infusionsoft, okay? Let me show you exactly how I write my subject lines and how I write my context and what I do with my banner on my actual email and how I communicate to people, okay? Let me show you. Maybe, if you practice enough you’re going to increase your own value by showing me how good you are along the way.”
Guys, it’s something that sometimes it’s so simple and it is constantly overlooked. As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to be doing what you’re doing right now – your learning, your listening, you’re implementing those things that you’re learning along the way. But, now you need to actually scale yourself and you need to show them all about it. So, figure out a system on scaling yourself because when you do so, you get to expand. Look at me. Do you know how much freedom I have? Do you know why I’m here? I’m running a multi-million dollar agency. I have big clients, guys. Some of them are selling millions of dollars a month already and I have an international client and I’m here talking to you. Why? Because I’ve built a system of people under me that are our representation of the quality of Manuel Suarez’s advertising efforts. I’ve built that system myself by getting good at it and then eventually getting people under me trained so they themselves can also get good at it and they can also use it to expand their business and train people under them. My guy, my little brother Jay who’s been with me for 4 years now, he already has 20 people working under him and he’s been able to make a lot of money, more money that he has dreamed about in the last couple of years. He didn’t even think he was going to expand so much with me.
So, I am building an organization of people, of human beings. My staff are more important than my clients. My staff is what keeps this company alive. They are the heart of this organization and I want to keep them growing and expanding along the way. Treat them like they’re worth $1 million because they’re worth it. Now, here’s my philosophy. A lot of people that you are going to bring in to the equation to work for you, they’re not going to be able to be a good fit, they’re not going to do a good job for you, okay? You have to fire a lot of people. My philosophy is I hire fast, very, very fast but I fire faster. If you do this, guys, if you actually work on that philosophy, you’re going to scale a team from 1 that you are to 20 or more in no time, just like that. Because now, you are going to get rid of the ones that don’t work and you are going to bring in some more and along the way you are going to find some gold mines. There is a lot of opportunity to bring in gold mines right now. Out of my 40 something staff, I got 20 from the Philippines, several in Mexico, several in the United States, and I’ve got them all over the place.
There are some people from the Philippines for example in other places of the world, in Latin America, that are geniuses that need opportunities, people with a lot of potential that need and want opportunities. They have perfect english, perfect grammar, great ability, or maybe not a perfect grammar but they definitely get better along the way, and their abilities get better and they will blow you away.
My number 1 Facebook Messenger guy, he’s actually a Filipino. My top editor, he’s a Filipino. I built a course that has sold millions of dollars and I’ve got hundreds of students on it that is actually a course that in great part was created by some guys from the Philippines that are genius minds that got inspired by me and they do great quality content based on what I do. Geniuses, creative, artists, entrepreneurs, copywriters, marketers, all these guys are available.
Write down. Here’s a very practical tip before we end for this particular video and podcast because I’m also recording this for Facebook live. Here’s a hot tip for you guys. Write down every single part of the business that you do every single day, all the actions. Explain it and record yourself doing them. Save them on a document. Get an Amazon cloud. Get Egnyte. It’s one that I use, E-G-N-Y-T-E. I am not affiliated. Get Dropbox or whatever it is that you want to use. Store that information in there and use Clickfunnels website with all your training and then bring a person in. This is what you’re going to do. This is how you are going to get your first person to help you, okay? If it’s for Facebook ads, if it’s running your Instagram, if it’s to post things for you, if it’s to optimize your Amazon listings, whatever it is that you want to do, go get one person. You can go to one thing that I’m recommending right now, a freeeup, okay? F-R-E-E-Eup.com/manuelsuarez. You get a $25 coupon to get credit on these people, okay? You’ve got to try them out. They’re called freelancers. You get them into your team and start helping you out. And now, you start seeing how much they can help you and it’s going to start releasing you. You give them one responsibility, “Give me a product research on this particular line, okay? Optimize the listings. Help me integrate Helium 10 into my Amazon account. Help me with posting things on Facebook. I want you to set up a product catalog for my account, for my Shopify listing. Help me integrate a catalog. Start running some video views campaign. Help me edit a video.” Whatever it is that you want to do, get some help and start going outside and getting some parts into action so now you can get people to start helping you grow your business along the way. Seriously, it’s going to help you explode your business along the way.
So, go to freeeup.com/manuelsuarez. I’ll put a link down below in this podcast or on this video and you can go and sign up for the account, find somebody, test them out. They’re going to help you qualify these people to make sure they’re good for you. If they don’t work you fire them, you get somebody else until you find a good one. Once you’ve really found a good one, you’re going to start giving responsibilities to this person, see what their potential is at and then you get another person to come in, and then you get another person to come in, and then you get another person to come in. But, first, before you do that, write down every single activity that you do in your life for your business – all of it, no exceptions. Spend a couple of hours thinking about everything that you do and write it down step-by-step and then record yourself doing these activities and save those videos to be able to train your guys on how you do things. And even if you have to do live trainings, well, I did that a lot with my guys – live trainings, share screens, for hours a day or whatever it is until I get good at it – do it. This is going to release you and now you’re going to be able to really, really, expand your business. Add other brands, scale winners, turn off losers, expand your business, build Messenger channels, expand your brand, add a new product, build Instagram campaigns, create story video ads. There’s just so much to do so you have to figure out how to get that help. Otherwise, you’re going to stay stuck. But, also remember that you must also continue to learn these things because if you don’t learn these things yourself, it’s impossible to know if these guys are doing a good job or not for your business. “Oh, yeah boss. I think I’m doing a great job on it.” How do you know if you don’t do it yourself? Learn about it and then scale yourself by adding people to your staff.
Guys, I cannot express this with more passion. In reality, scaling a team is the way that you actually can expand your business. Scaling a team equals scaling your business. As simple as that. All right? I hope that you like the podcast and we’re going to keep it going, okay? Every single week I’m going to try and give you a new podcast. I’ve been off for about three weeks. I’m so sorry about that guys. I know I have been disconnected, my content is going heavy once again. I’m going to keep on giving you, guys, that are working, and how to be able to get your business to the next level no matter what your business is and take advantage of the modern opportunities. I am the Facebook marketing ninja. I am riding the wave and I hope that you are riding the wave also. All right.
