So we had a great interview. We talked about the strategy on social media, the strategy in this era that we’re all living through, which is inevitable that I recommend for everybody to be able to put into motion because we either survive or we succumb.

And I think we are probably looking to survive, especially all of us that are part of this podcast – all of you guys and myself.

So it’s a great interview. Probably, you’re gonna get a lot of value. Hopefully, you do.

As usual, I get intense and I’m trying to give a lot of examples and make it very practical for you to be able to implement some of those things that I’m talking about based on my own results and the things that I’m seeing myself across my brand, across my clients and everything that I manage every single day.

So it is on the 20th of April at the time of this recording, I’m still running the humanitarian campaign to try to get people educated for free on the subject of social media marketing and the things that I’ve done successfully.

If you are for the first time finding this podcast and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can go check it out at manuelsuarez.com/expansion.

KEEP ON LEARNING!

Maybe if you’re an artist, if you are some kind of an artist, some kind of a photographer, or some kind of like event person that you live of events, this podcast might be for you.

If you’re not, if you’re an eCommerce, if you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of value too.

So hopefully you listen to it and get a lot of value, and start getting implemented into your business, into your life in this unique COVID-19 era.

Without further ado, here is the brand new podcast with Mr. Marc Silber from Advancing Your Photography.

So we’re doing a special show, “How to Use Social Media to Thrive as a Creative Despite the Tough Environment”.

I’m going to introduce you to our guest Manuel Suarez. He’s an international speaker who’s delivered seminars to thousands of entrepreneurs around the world on the subject of digital marketing. A lot of you guys are entrepreneurs. We’re talking to you, okay?

He’s certified as a Facebook Professional and is the host of the Facebook Marketing Ninja podcast. Now listen to this, you guys. His strategies have helped generate over half a billion views.

You know, that’s half a billion views. Think about that. That’s a lot of people watching. That’s a lot of people getting information. Millions of subscribers, and a hundred over $150 million in revenue across all channels.

And he’s now showing the world how he’s doing it and he’s going to show us how to do it. Please give him a huge AYP welcome. Manuel, awesome to have you on the show. 

Manuel: All right.

Marc: I’m so glad to have you here with us.

Manuel: It’s great to be here, Marc. Yeah. Can you hear me well?

Marc: I can hear you now. Yeah. 

Manuel: Okay, fantastic. Okay, super great to be here, Marc. And it’s a pleasure to have an opportunity to help your audience.

I believe your audience is a very important audience to the world – artists, photographers, I mean aesthetics, right? It’s such a vital component to the world that we live in. That’s for sure.  

Marc: Yeah. Because this is becoming an issue and has already been brought up in comments, people are saying, what am I going to do?

I know photographers who say, my whole lineup just disappeared. I don’t know what I’m going to do. This is April. May, June, you know… Wedding photographers, June weddings have been canceled. It’s not a good picture.

So rather than just talk around the subject, I wanted to bring you on, like how can we energize ourselves? What can we do to be proactive about this?

And I guess we might as well just jump in. What do we need to do to overcome the inertia? We’ve come to a stop and to get it… The laws of motion, if something comes to a stop, you have to apply energy to it to get it moving again. Right? 

Manuel: Right. Right.

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO ENERGIZE THINGS?

So there are some very, very good news. I’m an optimist type of personality, right? And I think that when you’re an optimist, you can probably accomplish a lot more just being an optimist individual.

It’s incredible how underrated the mindset of an individual is overall. It determines whether you succeed or whether you succumb. That’s just the way it is.

At the bottom of success, at the beginning of it, the basic building block is the mindset. And what are we going to do? Are we going to eliminate the COVID-19 from the world? No. We don’t have that ability.

We don’t have the power individually to be able to make this disappear.

Are we going to ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t exist? We shouldn’t even do that ourselves. That’s another factor.

I say that we look at the silver lining and what can we do. And there are many silver linings. And I can tell you, Marc, I know that you did a small little intro about me. I appreciate that very much.

And it has woken up this very intense desire to help people more than ever because I believe that the leaders of the world right now can determine the present and the future and what’s going to happen with this world.

If the leaders do not step up, if the people that have an influence over the world are all doom and gloom and we all listen to the media out there, then, we’re not going to get out of it.

There is a lot of silver linings here, Marc. And for all of you guys that are listening, I have some people here on my phone that I think is jumping into your YouTube now.

Marc: Great.

Manuel: Anybody that’s on your audience, we have a lot of silver linings. And let me start with the first one, all right? And this is a lot of very, very practical, logistical, and things that are real. I’m not talking about a motivational point here. It’s not about, “Hey! Think bright and the world is going to be great.”

Right now, for example, I have been diving into the government relief program for the last several weeks.

$2 trillion were put out in the world, $2 trillion. And all of you guys, whether you’re a photographer, whether you’re self-employed, whether you have a small team of people, whether you have whatever it is, you qualify for some sort of relief.

How incredible is that?

Now, entrepreneurs, business owners, people that are like that are in it for blood, we like to control our destiny. We are not generally excited about government relief. We’d never been excited about that.

We haven’t been excited about getting a paycheck from the government about food stamps. It’s something that I’ve always been proud of the fact that I don’t need a handout from the government, I just don’t.

But right now, we have the opportunity to get that handout because let me tell you something.

If you don’t get it, somebody else will. 

Marc: That is right.

Manuel: It’s going to be given out and that’s just the way it is. So they have launched, they have a program.

I am not a financial advisor. I am not a CPA. Please do not take my advice. That’s not the idea.

I have been getting myself informed as an entrepreneur because there has been a halt.

So if you had, for example, wedding events and they have all been canceled, which is true. I don’t know who the heck is running weddings at this point in the world.

I think I saw an article the other day about a country that decided to leave everything open. I forgot about what country it is, but they’re running their tests and they say, you know what? We’re going to find out if it’s true that they’re doing the right thing around the world and they just left the world open.

So they’re going to find out if it’s going to spread or if it’s just fear that’s spreading more than the virus, whatever.

The point is that right now events around the world have been canceled for a while. They will be canceled for the next month or two. Who knows how long?

So if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a photographer that you used to run events, weddings, concerts, you used to get gigs here and there, you have lost the source of income so you qualify for relief!

Exciting things about reliefs

That’s if you’re in the USA, all right? I get questions from people like, “I live in Pakistan. Do I qualify?”

NO. This is a US relief program, all right? It’s called the CARES Act. C-A-R-E-S.

So I’ve been talking about that throughout the last couple of weeks and I have a lot of seminars and webinars and podcasts in which I’ve been covering this subject. And I even brought in some experts to talk about the subject.

But there are many programs that you as a photographer will qualify for.

EIDL

(Economic Injury Disaster Loans)

For example, there’s one called the EIDL, which is the emergency disaster relief loan or something like that.

You get a $10,000 grant which you go to sba.gov and then you submit a couple of questions and then you get a $10,000 grant and that’s fantastic. What it does is this, it buys you the most important asset that we all have. Do you know what that asset is, Marc? 

Marc: I have a pretty good idea. But I’m going to let you tell us. 

Manuel: Let me tell you what my thought is. My thought is, and that I believe is senior to everything else.

And that’s time.

It buys you time.

This is not an era for you to be selling gigs right now. I’m sorry. Bad news, right? Nobody’s going to be booking you for the next couple of months, not because they shouldn’t, because the media is feeding them a lot of terrifying news and everybody is scared.

And there are restrictions and there are government rules and laws and quarantines put in place.

In Puerto Rico, if they catch you on the streets after a certain time, you are going to get arrested. You get tickets and things like that. So it’s a reality of what’s happening today in this world and it’s quite inevitable that it will continue being so.

So I will tell you that you need to focus on a three-step-formula, three steps.

I have a bunch of much more information on that and then I can answer any questions that the audiences are bringing in. But I can tell you.

Figure out which program you qualify for

That could be something called the EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loans).

It could be something called the Paycheck Protection Program.

Which the Paycheck Protection Program is something that you will qualify for if you have a payroll, which generally has to be more than $48,000 a year in payroll.

Whether you pay yourself or you pay your employees, you need to have payroll. If you don’t have payroll, you don’t qualify for this. You need to be paying payroll taxes in 2019.

They look at the 2019 year, the last 12 months and they’re going to pay you 2 and a half months of payroll.

Let’s say for example, that you do $300,000 in payroll a year. You’re going to end up with a $62,000 paycheck.

Something like that, right? That they’re going to give you. Here you go, right? Here’s a loan.

If you use that money 8 weeks after you get that money from the government which is going to be given to you by your local bank, your regional bank, your big bank, whether that’s Wells Fargo or whatever it is.

There’s a lot of information about this. If you use that money to pay payroll, to pay the mortgage, or rent, or utilities, that loan could be 100% forgiven, 100% forgiven.

So it ends up being a grant, nontaxable. They don’t even count it towards your income. Here you go.

Marc: Is it possible that some similar programs exist in other countries because we do have people from all over the world. So you guys should check on your own country if there are similar programs that exist as well. That’s really important. 

Manuel: Yeah. Marc, do you have people from Europe, for example?

March: We do.

Manuel: I think there’s a huge United Kingdom fund that they just announced. That’s not my market, but I believe that they launched $300 billion or so. Something pretty big, too. Something pretty big.

There are programs that the government is rolling out to help you wherever you are at.

I got familiar with the one that I can take advantage of which is the US program. Particularly in my case, I have 60 staff, Marc.

You’ve met a few of them and some of these guys are rock stars. I pay them a lot of money. Right now I don’t have the new clientele coming in like I used to. I’m still doing great.

I can tell you, Marc, that the US has been breaking records on layoffs and unemployment. It’s incredible.

The highest ever before COVID-19 was 600,000 people laid off in a week and that goes back to somewhere in the 1930s, something dramatic, like a lot of people. It was a devastating economy.

We had a week with 2 million people and that was like, wow. And the following week, 6.2 million people filed unemployment. So we have a huge amount of people in the world that are being laid off in the US particularly. It has gone off the rails which makes sense. I mean, these businesses, they cannot operate, they cannot sustain payroll. Off you go, right?

Any of you guys that have a job still,

if you have a job,

you can be grateful for that job.

That’s what I would say in the US because I’m doing a good job myself. I have 60 staff. I have laid off a total of three staff. A total of three staff out of 60. And these three people that I have laid off, it’s because they weren’t essential right now. They had talent and they had potential, but it didn’t feel that they were going to be able to help me keep the engine running at this point. So other than that, I’ve been keeping on the payroll.

Right now that we have this new government program, it’s just even a motivation to keep them on board and just get ready for a comeback. Because that’s one thing that I will tell you guys, like everybody that’s listening in,

“You’ve got to get ready for the comeback because the comeback is on its way. It’s happening.”

Is it going to happen

in a month or two?

Manuel: I know the stock market has been come-backing in for the last week already big time.

Marc: Yup. For sure.

Manuel: It went from 18,900 to like 23,000 in a matter of like a week. Big, big bounce! So there are signs of the economy already snapping out of the huge doom-and-gloom world that we are living on right now even though there’s a lot of lockdowns right now. So you’ve got to be prepared, all right?

So step one, figure out how you can get some relief to cover for the expenses that you still have right now and to make up for the lost income that you inevitably have had due to event cancellation, not getting new bookings and all that stuff that all artists and musicians.

Marc: Exactly.

Manuel: And I can tell you what the two steps are for that comeback. And if you want me to, I can dive right into that. 

Marc: Yeah. 

Manuel: Yeah. So this is an era… You guys, if you follow me, you know what my expertise is. If you are in Marc’s world and you’ve been learning about photography and being a great artist on your end, then you might not have heard about me before. That’s fine. I’m barely like just getting started on my end.

But I can tell you that I have been obsessed with the online opportunity way before COVID-19, way before. I had been helping people and myself penetrate audiences and millions of people, billions of video watchers at this point.

As of right now, I have been responsible for the marketing for people like Dr. Eric Berg, who is one of the Keto Kings.

My father who’s like at the top of the health and fitness food chain in the subject of metabolism in Latin America.

People like Chick Corea, the incredible musician who’s a legend with 23 GRAMMYs. By the way, he’s done 22 straight. Have you seen that, Marc?

Chick Corea has done 22 straight Facebook lives. He is on fire. 🔥🔥🔥

Marc: I have not. But he is amazing. I mean, he’s a phenomenon.

Manuel: Right. So I had been helping him as an artist penetrate the world so we can be ready for a comeback because here’s what happens.

If you penetrate the world right now, and I highly recommend that you check out Chick Corea so you can see what he’s doing, I highly recommend it.

If you go to facebook.com/chickcorea. It’s C-H-I-C-K-C-O-R-E-A. He’s one of the artists with most GRAMMYs in the world. Number six, he has more than Beyonce. He has 23 GRAMMYs.

He’s a jazz player. He’s incredible. He’s an incredible artist. He’s like a legend. He’s 80 years old. He’s an absolute legend. And somebody that I have the privilege of working with. We got him.

COVID-19 was an opportunity to get him on social media in a big way.

He’s been on social media for a while, but he hasn’t been on social media for a while. It’s like you’re in it but you’re not in it.

So 22 days ago, he’s like, you know what? Okay, I’m ready, Manny. Let’s go. He calls me, Manny. Let’s go. Let’s do it.

So we started getting him on Facebook live on his phone, just like I’m doing right here with my phone here with some people that are here. And he started doing Facebook lives just on a little studio that he has with his piano and just playing.

And this thing started going viral. Millions of views, explosion. People are sharing it and he’s been getting reached from all over these organizations all over the place.

It woke him up and he understood the potential of these platforms, which is my number one obsession, Marc.

My number one goal

is to help people understand how these platforms work and how powerful they are to help you spread your message.

How I like to let people know… Look, in this COVID-19 world, just let this sink in for a second. Just think about this for a second. Just take a moment and analyze this.

Try to go back to 1990. It depends on your age if you can go that far back, right? But I know I can. I was a young kid…

Marc: Easy for me.

Manuel: Easy for you, right Mark? What are you? Are you 40 right now? 

Marc: Yeah. About 39.

Manuel: Somewhere around 45. 39? Okay. I’m 39. So in 1990, I was nine years old.

Marc: Same age.

Manuel: Yeah. I think Marc was about 10 or 12. Yeah, 10 or 12, something like that. I have a lot of white hair, too. 

Marc: Aha! That’s cool. That’s cool by the way… just to be part of the club. I dye this. It’s not normally white. I have to dye it that way. So you were telling us what we can do. I think the second thing or the third thing you were on here. 

Manuel: Yeah, I was talking about the 1990 and going back to that era and I want everybody to be grateful and look at the positivity of this whole thing and the silver linings within it, right?

So right now, what’s happening? At this moment, I am on Facebook live talking to my people and at the same time I am on YouTube live in the middle of a quarantine talking to Marc Silber and talking about how to help you guys be successful in this era.

This was not possible in 1990.

It was not possible.

We didn’t have any of this technology. And we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have Facebook, we didn’t have none of this stuff to communicate to the world.

Imagine COVID-19 in the 1995 era. It will be a very, very difficult era.

So we have a three-step-formula right now, right?

1. Get government relief. Get help. Focus on doing whatever you need to do to get some help so you can stay alive, so you can pay your bills, so you can stay alive and survive.
2. You want to build audiences. Right now, this is an opportunity for audience building. It’s not an opportunity for selling. It is not a market to sell, all right?

Now, there is selling happening. I am selling. I have a marketing agency called Attention Grabbing Media. It’s AGM which stands for Attention Grabbing Media. That’s what we do. We capture attention and we are selling and we’re doing quite well.

In March which is in the midst of the entire drama of the COVID-19 world, we had one of our highest ever months in my company called NaturalSlim. We have a supplement business.

You have talked to my dad before Marc so you know that we’re similar, we’re educators on the subject of health and metabolism. We have a supplement brand and we service the Latin community.

Well, we are getting numbers right now that we only dreamed about in terms of attention. We only dreamed about them. Yeah. So we’re focusing our strategy right now around audience building and providing value during these very difficult times so we can give people stability in regards to what’s going on.

So what a great opportunity for a photographer to start becoming omnipresent and showing the world what their skill is.

COVID-19 does not stop you from being a photographer. It stops you from selling your services, but it doesn’t stop you from performing your art. And if you are binge-watching on shows and you’re just going out over Game of Thrones and House of Cards and Walking Dead and wasting your time then that’s a different story.

This is a great time for you to explore your abilities and get yourself to the next level!

Audience building. Guess what? You have a wifi signal, you have internet, you have the internet to be able to send your message across platforms as much as you want.

Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram TV, stories on Instagram, stories on Facebook, YouTube, SnapChat, TikTok.

All these places are distribution channels that our ancestors never even dreamed about having.

They just didn’t have access to any of that stuff. And we get to be in quarantine with a connection to the world.

We are not stopping socializing. We’re doing social distancing, but we have replaced it with social media.

So what a great opportunity for you to jump into the social media era and go heavy at:

1. Improving your skill
2. Telling your story
3. Sharing your talent with the world
4. Teaching, educating, showing people how they can make this particular skill better because you have that ability.

What a great opportunity! As you build audiences then you can focus on a marketing strategy. That’s why I put together seven things that you need to do. Seven exact things, all right? And I can go over that with you guys if you want, Marc. Would you like me to go over these three things? Seven things.

Marc: I do! Yeah. I want to chime in for one second here and have you mention. You have a pretty amazing scholarship. I told all these guys that you’re giving something away. Could you tell them about this scholarship that you’re offering? 

Manuel: Yeah. So before I jump into that, if you guys are joining in late on Facebook, there’s a link pinned in the comments and you can go and join the interview that I’m having right now with the one and only Marc Silber, all right? I’m on a YouTube live.

So Marc, when this whole thing evolved, I have two things in my business model. I do marketing services which are delivered by my agency.

I have 60 staff and we perform services:

• Social media marketing
• E-commerce
• Building channels (Messenger)
• Lead generation and all those things
• Strategies (Marketing Strategies)

That’s one side of the things that I do. And the other side is that I sell digital training, a digital program. And I have been very successful doing that.

I have been getting on stages for many years now. It feels like 20 years. It’s been only three years.

But for the last three years, I have been getting on stages talking to the world. I get on bigger stages, smaller stages and I explain to people about the opportunities.

I put together a training called the Facebook Masters in which I teach people about how to be experts in the subject of marketing themselves.

And this is something applicable to anybody that wants to be an influencer, an artist, somebody that wants to understand marketing on these platforms, how to use Facebook correctly. Somebody that wants to understand how to find an audience, how to build lead generation funnels, all those things that we need to be successful.

Because one thing is to be an artist, another thing is to be a marketer, business person. Two separate subjects.

I see a lot of artists out there, Marc, and I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of them that are highly, highly, highly talented and they’re not able to monetize because they don’t know how to market, they don’t know how to get the world to see them.

And that’s what I like to do. I like to teach people about marketing – how do you capture the attention and then monetize it.

Capturing attention is not enough.

You need to know how to monetize it.

So I put together a course which I sold for $2000 to thousands of people over the last two years and it has been very successful.

When this whole thing started exploding, I decided making my own personal obsession and go into a humanitarian campaign and help the world by providing a lot of value myself and using my superpower, which I think is what we all should do.

What is your superpower? What is your skill? You need to give it to the world right now because the world right now needs to get stronger with people that are talented and united and we work together to get ourselves out of it.

So instead of being selfish about it and just going to bed knowing that I can help businesses survive this very difficult era, I decided to open up my closed doors and I gave access to people. And I have gotten over 8,000 people signed up to my scholarship right now which has been incredible!

People all over the place are talking about the program. They’re getting great results.

I put three rules in place

three requirements

1. I give access to the course for free. They need to stay active in the program. It is 190 lessons, 12 modules. It’s a pretty big program. It takes them step-by-step. So I required that they stay active, number one.
2. I require that they help me spread the word and help me share the message with their friends and family, post on social media, et cetera.
3. I require a video testimonial from them that is 60 days after they sign up.

There are no offers, no upsells, no cross-sales, no one time offers, no customer journey down-sells, none of that stuff. It’s just pure value, doesn’t require a credit card, nothing.

So I put this together. It’s been helping a lot of people. I believe that a photographer that understands these platforms well will be able to get his message out there more.

So if anybody wants to get access to that, they can go to manuelsuarez.com/expansion and you can probably put it in the comments there.

Marc: Gerald will put that in there.

Manuel: Yeah, so manuelsuarez.com/expansion.manuelsuarez.com which is M-A-N-U-E-L-S-U-A-R-E-Z as in zebra.com/expansion and they’ll be redirected to our page in which I talk about what the course is and what is the humanitarian mission due to the COVID-19 thing. And I opened up my doors that are usually closed for people to come and learn about these platforms.

Marc: You know, I have to thank you for your generosity because we have our very own Brian Meek. Our marketing manager is taking the course right now. I believe he’s on here. Maybe you could leave your testimonial. We’re taking care of all three things right now. 

Manuel: Oh, that’s good.

Marc: So we’re helping you get it out to other people. We’re going to give a testimonial and we’re going to show you the results too because hey, look, you guys.

Manuel: That’s great. 

Marc: $2,000 he’s not kidding. This is no gimmick here. There’s no gimmick. There’s no side secret, whatever. You’re not going to get asked for anything else. This is a pure gift because something that Lorand said to me, one of your top guys, he said, “Look. Who’s going to pull us out of this slump? Unfortunately, it’s not the government right now, guys. You know, we do have the programs, but it’s going to be us marketing and marketing ourselves and generating our economy. And this is probably one of the biggest lessons we’re all learning out of all this. We have to generate our economy. This is the real deal. We have all the tools in front of us just like what Chick is doing.” What did you say 21 days in a row on Facebook live?

Manuel: Yeah, yesterday was day 21. 

Marc: We’ve almost done that. You guys have been tuning in with me…

Manuel: Yeah. yesterday was day 21. 

Marc: Okay. I don’t know if we’ve hit 21 but we’re getting close to him because you guys have seen me on YouTube live every single day.

I’m doing it exactly for the same reason, which is I have to get out what I know to you and bring you amazing people who know what they know.

So this is how we add value to the world. So we’ve got the link in there. 

Manuel: Absolutely.

Marc: Yup. The link is in there. You guys can afterward. Don’t do it right now, but click on it. We’ll make sure you get it in any case. Sign up for that and do the course. Okay, so I interrupted you.

Manuel: It’s going to be open until April 30th. Just so they know, April 30th and then we go back to selling it.

Marc: Get on it today for sure. So that’s his scholarship. That’s pretty amazing. And you guys who have joined in here are lucky for doing that.

So tell us the rest. I interrupted you. You were going through some key points that we need to be working on.

Manuel: Going back, for anybody that has joined late and I believe this applies to anybody – my audience, you guys that are here watching on Facebook, people that are on YouTube that don’t know me, photographers, there’s a three-step plan.

And those three steps are:

1. You want to be able to take advantage of one of the relief programs and figure out how you can qualify and get some help so you can have that wherewithal so you can survive during these tough times until the economy gets back and you’re able to sell your services.
2. You need to focus on audience building.
3. As you build audiences, you need to become an expert on the subject of marketing so you can do lead generation.

That’s what I call it. It’s my survival battle plan and this applies 100% to you as an artist, as a photographer, as a business owner, as a solopreneur. No matter what, this is what you need to do. You want to number one…

1. Communicate Omnipresence

What does that mean – omnipresence?

It means that you want to be in as many places as possible at the same time.

We have known for years and religion that God is omnipresent. God is everywhere. God is supposed to know every single aspect of what we do every single day across the entire planet.

And that’s a commonly held belief. No matter what you believe, if you’re a religious person, generally that is the belief that we have across religion – omnipresence, God is everywhere.

What I’d like to tell people is that you need to accomplish a god-like phenomenon on social media. You need to be everywhere.

• If somebody opens up LinkedIn, they need to see you.
• If they open up Facebook, they should be seeing you there.
• If you are on YouTube live, then you have another chance like Marc right now, having people seeing you.
• On Instagram, on stories.

You need to be everywhere in as many places as possible.

So people sometimes ask me, Marc, how much should I do? Well, the answer is always with a question and I always say to them,

“How bad do you want it?”

How bad do you want to get there? Do you really, really, really, really want to capture audiences and be able to grow your business and spread your message? How bad do you want to get there? How big are your goals?

And it does depend on that. If your goals are massive, then you’ve got to know that you can put the energy behind it.

It’s like it’s going to go in direct relation to how much you put out there, right? You’re not going to grow more than the energy that you create.

So if you create a lot of energy in this area and if you’re good at it, which photographers, if you guys are doing this as a job, if you guys are experts in this field, you’re proud of your work.

You are very perfectionist about your ability and your skill so you’ve got to get it out there because there’s a lot of people out there that could benefit from your knowledge.

So you want to communicate through omnipresent.

The other thing that I’m doing that I have applied successfully, because like I said, I’m not just preaching here guys. I’m not talking out of a dream or whatever I think is right to do in this era. I’m talking about things that I have been walking myself.

I don’t generally talk about things unless I have traveled the road myself.

So I have been communicating with omnipresence.

If you check me out on social media, my YouTube channel, Manuel Suarez, my Instagram, Mr. Manuel Suarez, LinkedIn, Facebook Manuel Suarez.

You check me out. You’re going to see that I am walking that talk every day and whatever you open, you’re going to probably see me if you start following me.

So this is important. Also, my father who has a big YouTube channel, we have 2.4 million subscribers at this point, Dr. Eric Berg who has a bigger channel with over 3 million people. As I said, Chick Corea, we are doing this every day. This is the message. This is what I’m pushing. I tell people,

“Look, if you want to make it, you’ve got to do this. If you want to survive, you’ve got to do this. You’ve got to communicate omnipresent and you’ve got to be aggressive and you’ve got to provide that particular aspect of your being to the world.”

So number one, communicate omnipresence. So if you handle that point, the rest will start falling in place.

And that is something that you guys have to get used to because sometimes people are like, “I don’t think I should be talking this much. My neighbor already told me that they’ve been seeing me too much on social media and I should quiet down. My wife doesn’t like the way my hair looks.” Or whatever it is.

You’ve got to get through that and just do it and just do it as much as possible and just get on that in a roll.

And the first six months, the first year is about you getting used to your voice. But what a better opportunity in a quarantine era to get started right now.

2. Don’t Ignore Reality

Point number two out of seven is talking with reality. I like brands and people to understand that you don’t want to pretend like nothing is going on because you’re going to become unreal to people.

You don’t want to become unreal. You want to talk to them, “Hey, this is what’s going on. I know. This is how I can help you.”

Let’s provide value to them based on your expertise. Talk with reality.

Point number three is to be a stabilizing influence. Be somebody that is there to help them.

Look at Marc. Marc is an example. He’s there, myself, we’re examples. We’re here trying to show people a roadmap to survive and to get through this together, to be better, to do better.

It’s a roadmap. It’s a path. It’s not, “Look at what the media said. Oh, we got the highest ever deaths.” 24 hours later, “Let’s talk about death. Let’s talk about non-survival things. Oh yeah. Doom and gloom.”

No! We’re talking about, “Hey, the world is dealing with this. How about if we do this so we can put our little piece to make things better around ourselves?”

So you want to be a stabilizing influence on people and just contribute your personality.

If you’re going to be a Debbie Downer, if you’re going to be a negative person, then this is not for you. Artist is not for you. You shouldn’t even be doing this.

But if you have the willingness to put your heart and soul into being a better person to the world, then this is for you. This is a platform for you to get your message out there.

Wow. I’m lucky that I have a little umbrella over me guys because it started raining over here and MacBooks are not waterproof yet. Not yet.

Marc, you asked me to go inside, but I highly, highly avoid that because there are children running all over the place, making noises, banging things. And as much as I try to control them, Marc, I have not been able to.

If you have some tips for me, because I know you have children too, you’ve got to share them with me because I say…

Marc: Be patient until they grow up. 

Manuel: “You guys have got to be quiet. I’m at a meeting.” So I can kick them out, right? I’ll tell them I can kick them out of the house. 

Marc: It will get easier when they grow up. 

Manuel: Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. So go ahead.

Marc: But we love you’re in the rain because we all need rain anyway. So it’s good. It’s a good thing.

Manuel: Okay. So number four, you want to provide value. You want to do something like what we’re doing right now, we’re providing value, we’re giving them some stability, some information.

Look at me. I’ve got a humanitarian campaign. I have probably sacrificed a few hundred thousand dollars by now by opening-up on my humanitarian program.

Who’s going to buy a $2,000 program when it’s available for free? Believe it or not, I’ve had a few people buy it. And I have felt bad about it and I have reached out and I had said to them that the program was open for free because of the humanitarian mission. Because I didn’t want them to find out.

I’ve got to purchase this for $2,000. And I’m like, Oh my God, can somebody reach out and refund and explain why this is not open for selling?

The sales page was open and we have people open it. So I’m providing value to the people that follow me, to my audiences because I believe that’s my superpower.

So you’ve got to figure out what is your superpower. And that’s a question for you guys to ponder.

• What is your superpower?
• What is your super skill?
• How can you help?
• Are you great at interviewing people?
• Are you great at being a photographer?
• Do you have a special, unique skill that most of the people out there will love to have but they don’t have?

Why don’t you teach that? Why don’t you just go ahead and talk about that and teach that? So you’ve got to figure it out. It’s like you go out there and you think about it.

You don’t have to have an answer right now. And if you do, if you guys are interested, you should go and comment on the live and let me know what they are so I can see some of your responses.

But generally, you might have to do some thinking about this. What is your super skill that you know that you’re always proud of talking on dinners with friends, at parties, on activities?

You can’t stop thinking about it.

There’s a button that you cannot shut down.

My superpower is marketing. I cannot be quiet on that subject. I can talk about marketing all day long. I can talk about opportunities and marketing all day long.

That is my superpower. People pay me a lot of money to get a little bit of what’s in here. I get a lot of consulting fees. I get a lot of people that want me to have a seat on their table.

I mean I have had seats on tables of people that I have never dreamed about like incredible people. I mean, let me give you an example.

Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright. I get to sit down with her and talk about marketing.

I mean this lady was a big part of racing me because I used to watch the Simpsons growing up. And now I get to sit down with her to talk about marketing and help her with strategies. How incredible is that?

So I have a lot of people like that, that value my superpower, and they want to get it because I can’t turn it off. I don’t have a shut-off valve on that particular thing.

So you as a photographer, as an artist, you need to figure out what that is. And if you figured that out, you are way ahead of the game, probably better than most people out there are.

So we’re almost done with this section right here, and then we can get into any questions if you like Marc. 

Marc: You know what? Kind of adding to what you just said, when you figure out what you are good at, the thing you want to do is team up with somebody else who’s like Manuel who’s good at what you need.

You compliment each other. It’s like a good relationship. It’s not that both parties are exactly the same, that’s not necessarily a good relationship. It’s where they complement each other.

I mean, my wife does things I cannot do and I do things she doesn’t want to do, but together we compliment each other.

And so this is the other thing about building your own strength is to go, “Okay, I’m good at creating images, creating photographs. But I don’t know much about marketing.”

Okay. Team up with Manuel who has that superpower. And together we create it, we create this energy and that’s important.

You know what my passion is. I mean, if you’ve been watching my channel, I’m passionate about creativity. This is why I talk about photography. It’s just one facet of creativity.

I’ve talked to Nancy Cartwright. It is in my book, Create. And I talked to her because I wanted to get inside her mindset. How did she become such an amazing creative?

And so my passion is finding that and bringing it to you. So that’s just another thing. We create this energy.

That’s what we’re doing with this channel, too. We’re bringing people together from all over the world who want to live and expand and flourish right now.

So should we take some questions now? Manuel?

Manuel: Well yeah. Let me just finish the… Because I’ve talked about the seven steps on this COVID-19 battle plan. Almost, I’m going to wrap it up, okay? It’s good. I talk a lot. You have to interrupt me, Marc.

Marc: It’s okay.

Manuel: Or you’re not going to be able to get a word in. It’s a problem that I’ve had my whole life. You must interrupt me.

Marc: Okay.

Manuel: All right. So number five is building audiences. We’ve talked about that briefly.

So if you grab all those things, omnipresence, talk with reality, if you are a stabilizing influence, if you provide value, do you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to build audiences.

And the great news is that you don’t have to invest a penny on any of this.

As long as you have a cell phone payment and you have data and you have wifi, you’re good to go. You can just get out there and just go.

So the excuse of, I don’t have any money for advertising, it doesn’t belong here yet because we have platforms that we can use for free and you can just use them.

In the beginning, I highly recommend that you don’t start looking at how many views and how many posts, likes, and comments. It grows with time.

So if you have to do 158 videos that have one view, you do 158 videos with one view and you don’t worry about it. That’s just part of the game. It’s all part of it. So you want to just keep on building those audiences.

Number six, this is where my scholarship belongs because I am asking people to become marketing experts. .

Why is it that important? Hey, if you’re a photographer, well, unless you are in a humanitarian mission and you’re not interested in monetizing anything for the rest of your life, which most of you guys are interested in monetizing, then you need to know how to market yourself.

So you’ve got to be a marketing expert or as Marc said, find that team member that can complement that weakness. Because sometimes, you know, like if you look at my dad’s example, my dad has no clue how I do social media marketing. Now he does because we’ve been working together for many years.

But he found a way to compliment that weakness by bringing me in.

So you’ve got to find out if you can have one person that can be passionate in the subject of marketing and bring that person in to help you spread your message far and wide.

Because once you start building audiences, you need to now start scaling that and you just start monetizing that.

Marc: Yeah, you’ve been thorough and that is an incredible battle plan.

So, guys, this video is going to be back up tomorrow so there’s a lot of information here. Watch it again, send it to your friends, make sure you’re doing exactly what he said, which is being generous in getting information out.

Well, we have one here. Paul, you’ve been active over here. I’ve been kind of seeing out of the corner of my eye, you’ve been adding a lot of stuff here. But the question is, does your course offer a business model for sales over the internet?

Manuel: Absolutely. It’s a marketing course. I teach people how I’d been able to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Yes.

Marc: Okay. That’s a simple answer. If you guys have any other questions. I think Manuel, you did such a good job at explaining everything and that seven-step-battle-plan, is that written somewhere that we could get a download or a place, a handy resource for that? Let’s just watch the video. 

Manuel: Let’s just watch the video. I have over here and I can give this to you. I believe that over here it allows me to probably do this. 

Marc: You know, you can send it to me and we’ll put it in the description for the video itself.

Manuel: Yeah, we can create a download link for it and on the replay of this video, they’ll have it there so they can download it. We’ll give them access to it. 

Marc: Awesome. Listen. You guys, this is good advice. This is not just good advice. This is how we all need not only thrive for ourselves, but as members of the community.

A rising tide floats all the boats. You’ve heard that? The rising tide floats all boats, which means we’re not in it just for ourselves.

If we can help raise the tide, if we can help improve things, it’s going to improve everyone in the community. And this is how life works.

We’re interconnected here

One thing that this virus is teaching us is that we’re interconnected. I mean, there is a message here that we can’t just do things for ourselves. We have to care about other people.

We’re learning this lesson and maybe humanity needed to learn this lesson because from this we can come and merge stronger, which is giving more, being more caring, being more aware of other people. And these are good messages. Just as you said, there is a silver lining here.

But to those who take advantage of it now and begin as Manuel suggests reaching out into your community. And you can help me because the more people we have on our platform watching these shows, the more people who are paying attention to Manuel, the more people are going to learn and prosper during this time period.

Even if it’s because you have learned something new and you can take it back and put it in your community, that’s an asset.

So here’s a question from Rachel.

“How can I as a photographer get known in my area?

I don’t sell an online product.”

Marc: So she’s in the Seattle area. So how can she help get to be known just in that geographic area if she’s not selling something online? 

Manuel: Rachel, I don’t know if she saw the entire interview but I was not talking from the viewpoint of somebody that has an online store.

I was talking to a photographer that wants to sell gigs and wants to be able to get hired for events and get a reputation. That’s what I was referring to.

Now if you have an online, then that’s even better because you can monetize online. But Rachel, what you can do is you have to just apply this formula. You’ve got to be really, really omnipresent.

“Why focus on a geographic location only when Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and all these places allow you to be everywhere?”

You don’t have to segment, you don’t have to do that.

Now, if you become a marketing expert, which is what I recommend that you guys do, all of you, then you’re going to learn that advertising is your next level up. Advertising is after you figure out your content strategy and you’re putting your message out there and you’re omnipresent and you’re everywhere, you’re providing value and you’re doing all those things that I recommend, then with advertising, with a budget, you can micro-target your geographic area and you can target anything.

On Facebook advertising, on Instagram, the world is incredible. The advertising world is quite something there.

So you can grab $100, $500, $1000, and you can advertise with a video, with an image, with some kind of powerful message and invite people to follow you, to connect with you, to give you their identity, phone numbers, and emails. You’ve got to learn it, all right?

I have 12 modules on my course which is open right now. Again, we’re not selling you anything. There are 12 modules on my course and one of those modules, it’s module 6, it’s all about building audiences. I’m talking about advertising tools.

In module 7, it is going to teach you how to build an ad from beginning to end in which you can generate a lead that you can eventually get on the phone or text or email so you can sell them something.

I’m going to show you how to do lead generation. You can learn on the program how to do targeting. You can also find out if you live in the city of Clearwater, which is where I live right now, if you become a marketing expert, which is not complicated, if you learn how to market, how to advertise, you don’t have to invest a single penny outside Clearwater.

You can invest your advertising dollars

in getting known in the Clearwater area.

So whatever city you live in, you can target that city only. You can even target five blocks around your house. All of it is possible once you learn how to do this on the Facebook advertising world. That’s for sure.

Marc: Well listen, Manuel, this has been amazing. We’ve already been on for an hour. So we’re going to wrap up. Is there any final tip you want to leave these guys with as far as what they ought to do right now and how they ought to energize their careers?

Manuel: Yeah, I would say make sure that…

You’re not wasting your time.

Take advantage of this time right now to improve your skill

and to build a strategy

Because it’s not going to be like that for long. And at some point, you’re going to be allowed to get out and get back to normal operation, and get inside the Starbucks, and go to a party. All of that is going to happen. Right now it’s not.

Marc: And even hug people. 

Manuel: And even hug people. It’s so awkward right now.

Marc: Isn’t it weird?

Manuel: It’s super weird. Going back to the example of Chick Corea. Yesterday we were at his office, at his studio. Everybody is wearing masks, by the way, I did it. If you check out my Instagram story I show you a little bit behind the scenes on that. It’s about five of us. We’re keeping six feet apart while wearing a mask.

So we’re keeping the CDC regulations in place. But we want to hug each other, man. We did a super cool event. We want to just hug. Ah, congrats. High five. We cannot even high five, man. It’s horrible!

Marc: Air five.

Manuel: Yeah, air five. But it’s going to pass. It’s going to pass. You need to get ready for it. That’s all.

Right now, it’s not a time to waste time. Look at me like, look at Marc, right? We’re not wasting time. We’re working. We’re spreading our message. We’re sharing. 

Marc: I’m working harder than I have all year. It’s amazing.  

Manuel: Exactly, we can stay focused.

Marc: Thank you again for joining us and for your generosity. And just in case it isn’t clear to everybody, because I saw some comments about how much does it cost.

Here’s how much it costs. Can you see this? You’re never going to see this anywhere else. And this isn’t a gimmick number. This is a scholarship. It’s a hundred percent scholarship. It doesn’t cost you anything.

Take advantage of it. Put it to use because he’s giving you something of incredible value. And I know this for a fact because we’re doing it here at the studio.

So Manuel, again, thank you so much. I’m going to ping you soon. Standby. If I can Skype you in a few minutes, I’ve got a couple of ideas I want to run by. So enjoy the day, enjoy the rain, and thanks again for joining us.

Manuel: Yeah. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening, guys. 

Marc: Yeah, and you guys. Okay, listen, that was pretty amazing. Here’s the deal. We’ve already been on this campaign as you know in AYP that’s why I’m doing these daily broadcasts. We have an incredible guest coming up on Tuesday.

Felix is going to explain to you Lighting. He is amazing. He has done some incredible behind the scenes stuff. I don’t even know if I can tell you, but he focuses on celebrity portraiture.

He’s gonna debunk and demythesize Lighting and show you how easy it is. We all need a little bit more of that. Tuesday, that’s coming up.

Between now and then, there’s probably going to be a few surprises. I haven’t decided exactly what I’m doing over the weekend, but I think I’m creating a new inspirational film. I hope to put that out on Sunday. That’s a good day. That’s Easter. So I’ve got to get busy on that.

Listen, you guys. I need your help. Very, very sincere request. I need you to get on your social media. I need you to talk to your friends. I need you to tell them about what we’re doing here with AYP live and have them join us. This is important. I’m reading your comments. People are saying this is the best content on YouTube. This is the most valuable stuff.

You’re not going to get exposed to people like Ed Kashi, a National Geographic New York times photographer. The guy has done so many things and you spend an hour with him. Or Chris Burkhardt or Bob Holmes or Dan Milner or all these other guests that I have coming up. But we need a much, much bigger audience and I need your help to do that. Please.

This is beyond the normal share, like, subscribe, all that kind of stuff. I’m talking to you deeply here. We need to 10 X this audience immediately and the only way we can do that is with your help. Okay? Please. Thank you.

Definitely subscribe. Leave your comments as the video will be up tomorrow at 11:00 AM and get busy.

Do what he said. Do those seven points in his battle plan. Watch the video again so you know what they are.

Sign up for his course and remember to get out and capture your own images of life. I love you guys. Thank you for joining me and us and we’ll see you again real soon.