Rob: Hi! Happy Thursday. Our CEO Network is coming live here from our studios in Phoenix, Arizona. My name is Robert Morales for Our CEO Network facing technical difficulties and a very technical difficult time. Our CEO Network – good people, better business discovering the best of you. Today we have a very special guest for the next 30 minutes.

If you want to hang in there, we’re going to be talking to our special guest about his business, his life and this thing we call social media.

And 30 minutes after that is a Q & A session to follow. So if you’re watching right now, if you’re able to watch, I can’t see anything. If you’re able to watch, hit those heart buttons, anything you like.

And if you’re watching us from the replay, hit that wow emoji because wow, I can’t believe you’re not watching this live.

Find us here on Facebook and also Instagram and LinkedIn, ourceonetwork.com. And if you stick around for the full hour, there will be a special prize at the end worth $750 value towards you and your business. So if you hang in there we will let you know how that goes.

So he’s an international guest speaker delivering seminars to thousands of entrepreneurs around the world in the subject of digital marketing. His social media strategies have also generated over 3 billion views. He has generated over 4 million leads and over $250 million in revenue in the last five years alone. He is a Certified Facebook Buying and Planning Professional, the Facebook Marketing Ninja, Manuel Suarez.

Manuel: Awesome, man, great to be here. Absolutely a pleasure.

Rob: There’s a very little clapping here. My goodness.

Manuel: It can get awkward. Yeah, it can get awkward. You can hear me well, right Robert?

Rob: Oh yeah, I can hear you which is good. So yeah, we’re entering into this whole new digital space, I think more so than ever. And I’m glad that Gabby and Devon connected and they connected us together. You know, we’re here talking about social media.

Manuel: Absolutely. That’s what it’s all about.

Rob: Let’s start up with you a little bit. I gave you a little intro, but from your perspective, tell us a little bit about Mr. Suarez.

Manuel: I am an accidental marketer. That’s a term that I made up. It’s not in the dictionary, Rob. I made it up. Because just a short 10 years ago, I was bankrupt and had nothing and I had to figure out how to survive.

Rob: Yup.

Manuel: And I had three children and they all depended on me, looked up to me and I had to figure out a way to provide.

I started looking into opportunities and I started learning about different things and I failed and I failed and I failed and I failed again and again. And I kept on picking myself up and going.

At some point I was presented with something that I liked. I tried it and I was successful and I didn’t stop. It’s one of those things that as an entrepreneur there is a button, there’s a switch that once it turns on there is not a possibility of shutting it off. There’s no valve. There’s no button. There’s no unplugging it and it turned on.

I think after a good solid 30 years of having zero interest in being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, being an executive, just had a nine to five, I did not get myself educated, I did not go through the system, I did not listen to my mom and my grandma about the importance of education, I did not care about the fact that all my friends were working hard to be a part of the system and the universities. I did not care about any of them.

30 years of life thinking that I was meant to be a failure because I didn’t care about any of those things that the system was providing.

I woke up and once I woke up, I have not looked back and I have been expanding ever since. Fast forward to today, I’m 39 years old. I built several multi-million-dollar businesses. I have a powerful agency that has grown from just (inaudible) years ago.

We run the marketing for people that I used to dream about having a connection with at some point. We get to work every single day on things that we’re passionate about and we love. No matter how difficult the economy gets or how difficult life gets, (inaudible) always on the driver’s seat, man. And that’s a beautiful thing about my world (inaudible) influence in the state of the economy as a marketer (inaudible) whether or not we expand, I’m the one in control of that. And that’s (inaudible) long story short, I’ve been working with.

Violet says, “Manuel was cutting up a little bit.” So let me see if I can change (inaudible). I’m going to change. I might go away for about one second. So give me a second.

Rob: All right. That’s not a problem. So we’ve invited Manuel out here again to kind of talk about the digital media landscape.

As we’re having this interview, we’re going to be like I said, intermixing a little bit of your life and then, you know, tips and tricks. A part of the CEO Network journey has been quintessentially my journey in exploring what business and entrepreneurship is. Going just from an idea to manifest it into reality – that’s always the challenge when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Everybody has great ideas, but then, so at what point? What’s the next point? So in your case, I’m sure at some point at the kitchen dinner table or maybe at an act of frustration, there was that turning point. What was that turning point for you to kind of propel you forward in this entrepreneurial journey?

Manuel: At the beginning, there’s a cliche going around that people say all the time, “You know, I’m not in it for the money. It’s not because of the money and I’m in it because you love it.”

Well, let me tell you one thing that is a fact that people don’t talk about. You get started because you need the money. That’s how the flame starts catching fire and expanding and evolving.

Because I remember very clearly just not having any money, and not having any survival, and not having money for diapers.

And I said, “I’ve got to find a solution.”

So for me it was what they call necessity level.

I’ve found myself in a position in which I looked around my family and I said, “Wow. I decided to build this family and I got three kids and I got a wife and I’m losing everything.”

I have to leave my house. This is the 2008 economic collapse in the United States. The only house that I ever bought. I had to give it up because I couldn’t afford it. I lost my job. I went through the same thing that a lot of Americans were going through at that stage. So I found myself in a very, very low condition.

In 2010, I declared bankruptcy and I had debt and I had credit cards and I had all these things going on and I lost everything. So I found myself in a position of…

I need survival

So that was how I believe that all entrepreneurs, successful ones or not, that’s how you start.

You start because you have a necessity level.

You start because you look in your environment and you say,

“I am not satisfied with this situation and I feel like I have a certain potential to do more about it.”

And that’s the first thing that I would suggest to anybody. Anybody that’s listening to this interview, anybody that’s interested in expansion and accomplishing more and being a better version of yourself. The first thing that you have to realize is that you can be better.

And I am by no stretch of the imagination, a motivational speaker. That’s not my task, my job, my role.

I have to motivate people along the way just because I’m passionate. And that’s what makes a good motivational speaker. They’re passionate about what they do and what they are.

But in my case, it’s such a true statement that you’ve got to find out and take a look inside and realize that there’s something better out there for yourself. And you don’t have to conform to poverty, to not having anything, to not accomplishing your dreams that you had your whole life to not having the lifestyle and the quality of life that you want to have for yourself and for your kids.

And once you realize that, your necessity level goes up.

At that point you can start taking action because without that realization, Robert, without you realizing that you can be better and do better, the action steps do not occur. So that’s the first step. You’ve got to realize that.

If you say to yourself, “Well, yeah. You know, I’m good the way I’m at. I have my own business. I’m okay like this. I have my nine to five and as long as I get my paycheck, I’m good.”, and you don’t have those dreams of being better, being greater, then, we’re not going to be able to accomplish success.

So it starts there. It’s a mindset.

I think I tell my people like, look, I think one of the greatest understatements, one of the things that is the most underrated thing in this universe is MINDSET.

It really absolutely is. When you have the mindset straight, the rest can fall into place. Without that, life can be quite a challenge if you don’t have it.

Rob: Circling that back actually brought something fairly interesting. The formation of the Our CEO Network came from my essence of… I’m an introvert at heart. I’m very much like I’d rather be home watching TV, my little booty socks, and hiding away.

So when I started, my primary business was real estate. So there was a lot of competition out there as far as competing with other agents. I think in Arizona alone there’s about 10,000 agents. And so, starting out that business, how do I stick out and what do I do?

Everybody kind of pointed to is you’ve got to go to Facebook, you’ve got to kind of redirect it to Facebook and you’ve got to put yourself out there. But then they don’t really explain what that means. You know what I mean?

And so there I’m struggling trying to figure out exactly what to do, what to say. Again, directing it back to Facebook because that’s what we’re here to talk about, as an entrepreneur. What are the things that you need to do or need to start from day one to kind of get you to that, when you talked about next level. We’ll talk about that too, to get you to that next level for an introvert like me?

Manuel: I would say that the number one thing that you have to incorporate every day is a learning process, Robert. It’s a learning process, doing something that is going to make you better.

“KNOWLEDGE

is an essential component to success.”

Everybody that has been successful, you can trace it down to getting an education on that particular thing. The difference between a professional and a beginner is quite obvious.

The beginner maybe started doing. Let’s say a piano player and he gave up. The professional, didn’t. He just kept going.

The process of becoming an expert

So, the process of becoming an expert at something, becoming good at something requires that:

• You learn something new every day
• You expand your knowledge

And I like to use an analogy, very basic. I use a lot of basic things that people can relate to just so they can fully grasp it.

We have trash cans. And those trash cans, you can put trash in them and just keep on putting trash in them. And at some point it’s flooded. It’s done. It doesn’t fit.

And you have to grab that trash and you’ve got to go to the dumpster and throw it out because it doesn’t fit anymore.

The mind is so incredible

Our minds are so powerful that you can just keep on putting knowledge in there. Put in knowledge.

No matter how long you put knowledge in there,

it never gets full.

So if you want to succeed in something, you’ve just got to get knowledge.

So what I recommend to anybody that wants to get themselves in that path is make a decision that you can change, number one.

Number two, after you’ve decided that you can be better, that you can improve yourself, that you don’t know everything, that you’re not a genius already at everything, that Oh my God, I already know all of that. What Manuel is saying, I’m already a Facebook marketer. I tried it and it didn’t work. My customers are not there.

That’s the sort of bias that people will say all the time even though you look at data science and you say, wait for a second, are you going to tell me that 80% of the population is using Facebook in the US? Yes. That’s what I want to tell you.

And at the same time you’re telling me that your audience is not there. So how does it make sense? Right?

So there’s a lot of people out there, they just put excuses in place of the facts as to why they’re not succeeding.

Explanations for failures are being put there to justify their own lack of performance in an area.

So you’ve got to just know that you can be better. Like even myself, I never get to a point in which I consider myself supreme and I’m like God, like in any area.

Secret #2: ACCUMULATE KNOWLEDGE

I have to always keep on learning, always look at who’s doing something better than me.

Even my own staff, who is actually doing something that is actually something that I hadn’t seen before that I can learn from? And always keep learning.

Once you have that system in place, then, you’ve got to put in the hard work. And you say about how you like to be in your bear socks? Your socks and then watching TV? What did you say

That’s another thing that I would tell people, the success formula, which it’s just based on my own path, not just on a dilution.

My success formula starts with: 

• Realization that you can be better
• Accumulation of knowledge
• Implementation of that knowledge, which is AKA hard work.

And along the way you’re going to be able to get better and better and better.

So, what do you want to learn about? What things should you as an entrepreneur, business owner, CEO do you need to do learning about?

Well, that knowledge has to be about today’s environment, today’s world.

If you tell me, “Manuel, I got it. I have been studying for the last year how to put a great copy on a billboard across America.”

Well, people are not paying attention there anymore. So I’m sorry, but you went on to study the wrong thing, right? “But no, no, no, no, I got it. I realized that it wasn’t a billboard. I started studying newspaper advertising or I went into Google ads and I did that.”

You know, this is the thing. You also have to make that study something that is applicable to today. So you’ve got to observe today’s world and understand how it works so you can implement the right knowledge, routine, of something that’s going to help you to date.

Not yesterday. Today.

If you go out there and you say, “I’m going to learn all about my space”, well what’s going to happen? You’re going to fail.

Now if you learn about existing communication platforms – Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Shopify, all these great platforms, then, you’re going to be learning about what you need to know today in order to succeed and the opportunities are big.

Hey, even in a COVID-19 era, Robert, which I’ve been talking about this quite a bit recently because obviously there’s a lot of attention on it.

We are growing by leaps and bounds. We are growing and expanding and it’s incredible, which I’m excited about because I have become an entrepreneur.

We’re talking about 2010 right in the middle of a financial meltdown. We were going down. 2010 I started picking up again. So I was there in the crash. I think I was personally the last property ever sold in America before the stock market exploded and the real estate market exploded.

I was lucky enough to become an entrepreneur in the middle of an economic expansion. And I always wondered what was going to happen with me as a marketer in the middle of a depression.

So I have been energized. I am still excited about it because I have been proving the strategy or my overall theory that…

Even in an economic meltdown,

I’m still going to do okay.

And I’m not only going to do okay, I’m going to THRIVE and EXPAND even though we have government shutdowns, people not being able to go out there like everything is closed, restaurants closed, the country’s shut down.

Even though we have all those things going on, we are expanding. So I’m excited because right now, Robert, I can tell you that marketing and the value of marketing has 10X. Because if you’re not good at marketing right now, you’re not going to make it in a recession. Marketing becomes that much more valuable.

So as the CEO, as an executive, as a business owner, you need to

obsess over becoming an expert marketer right now.

Facebook marketing, YouTube marketing, Google ads, Instagram advertising, content strategy. You need to really learn it. And we don’t have enough time to talk about it today.

Rob: Oh yeah. We really don’t.

Manuel: Exactly. So if you focus on that you’ll be able to get yourself to a whole new level and stable level. I don’t know if any of you guys know my father, which is basically my origin, part of my origin as an entrepreneur was grabbing his beautiful face.

Rob: Oh yeah. In a little segment, we’re going to talk about your dad.

Manuel: He was 62 years old. And I said, “Dad, we’re going to put you on a camera. We’re going to talk to your people on the internet. Nobody’s going to pay attention for a year or two, but trust me, this is the future.”

So we grabbed him and put him in the camera. He started talking to the world. This individual has gone viral. He gets more attention sometimes than President Trump on a Facebook live.

Rob: Stick a pin in there. I do want to get to him in a second. Again, we’re here live with Manuel Suarez, the Facebook Marketing Ninja. To follow in about a few minutes, we’re going to have the question and answer session just for you.

I’m going to reiterate. If you make it all the way to the end, we’re going to have that $750 prize. If you make it and answer a couple of questions. Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, Our CEO Network. I want to thank our sponsors since we’re here, Inside Productions for all the audio videos, even though we had some technical issues, but we will talk about that later. It’s my company.

Gabriela Chadez, thank you for setting up the interviews. Dan Kite from QT, our home away from home. Dan Kite is servicing all your workspace needs and office needs. He’s a shared workspace. If there are any Dan Kite from where QT is offering our members and people watching this video at Our CEO Network discounts for shared office space in the Phoenix Metro area.

So keep those hearts coming along and keep those likes liking and keep those wows wowing because we appreciate that. We appreciate the support. So I’m kind of going back into family a little bit. I did want to touch upon that because again, a lot of this CEO Network for me has been my own personal journey.

The question I had at this point since you kind of brought up your dad is the idea of balance.

Entrepreneurs, I know that I’m working up until one o’clock in the morning sometimes and to the dismay of others and this office space, I tend to work too much and they have a lot of concerns. Do you have a sense of balance? Because I think this conversation is taking more of like a life lesson. We’ll get into Facebook stuff in a minute.

Sense of balance with entrepreneurship

Manuel: You know, one thing that I have experienced, I can tell you from my experience Robert, it’s a really good question. You have to figure out how to get everybody on the same page because if you don’t, it will break up families. It absolutely can.

A challenge that an entrepreneur has, a challenge that any passionate real entrepreneur has is that

there’s no button to turn off your mind

And how it keeps on rolling as to how are you going to get your next level? How are you going to fix a problem? How are you going to be able to correct an issue? You’ve got fires, you got opportunities. I don’t know how to stop that.

And it’s a challenge because in my case, I have a wife and I have three kids. They’re very intense. Nine-year-old, 11-year-old, 13-year-old. My wife is pregnant, we have a family.

The one thing that has our biggest connection, I can tell you, my wife and I, is that we’re both entrepreneurs. She is the Executive Director of NaturalSlim, which is my dad’s company. And she’s very passionate and she’s actually an entrepreneur before I was way before. So that has allowed us to really, really connect that we have that reality and we are on the same page.

So sometimes, you know what? We try to incorporate routines. For example, in the mornings you wake up in the morning, obviously we are CEO’s, a lot of people that are listening here or anybody watching a replay or us, we’re CEO’s, right? So we get to kind of put our own schedules, right?

So one thing that I like to do is that I like to wake up in the morning and have my coffee, sit down with her and this environment here and just talk business and talk life and talk things and whatever she has attention on. And then once in a while we’ll go out and we’ll ride on a bike and we’ll go out there and we’ll just enjoy a walk and we’ll leave the phones behind.

The crazy thing is that…

Even when I spend time with my kids and I try to intentionally take my phone away from me just so I can focus on them, I don’t have a shut-off valve. I don’t, I don’t. It doesn’t really turn off. So you have to put the attention.

It’s not like some other people that would take it personal, that would be like, “Is it because you care more about your business than your wife? Or you care more about your business than your kids?”

No, it’s passion.

Sometimes you can get to a point in which you take for granted what you have around you. And that will be my advice. Do not take it for granted. I can tell you, my starting point, my initial energy came from them for me to get started because I had to give them something and I’m so passionate over them and I’m so dedicated to them.

But the game of business for me is such a big game. It’s such an exciting game, especially when you’re really winning and you’re conquering and you’re accomplishing goals and targets. It’s so awesome!

My 13-year-old, he can be playing Fortnite and he has a blast doing that. I have a blast doing this. I enjoy talking with you guys. I enjoy working. I enjoy handling my staff, managing an account, working with strategies. This is like, I love it. Right?

So because of that, because it’s so much fun, I don’t have a button to turn off. It doesn’t turn off. So you have to figure out a system that works for you so you don’t take for granted those people that are valuable to you.

But I can tell you that for me it has been important to bring them into my life. Not separate.

In my case, my kids before social distancing, before government lockdowns, I was traveling all over the world. I had to go to seminars after seminars, after events, after events, after meetings, after meetings, nonstop for years.

So what I would do so I can bring them on board with me and have them understand what I do, instead of talking to them about what success looks like,

I like showing them what success looks like.

So I say, “Daughter”. Her name is Camilla, she’s 11.

“You’re coming with me. We’re going to Toronto.”

“For what dad?”

“We’re doing a seminar for two days. I’m going to talk about marketing.”

“Okay. I’ll be your assistant.”

And she comes with me and she helps me for two days and she’s amazing.

My 13-year-old,

“Hey, we’re going to the Caribbean right now. We have a couple of seminars over here.”

“Exciting, let’s go.

So I like to take them with me so they can enjoy the game of life while at the same time they know what it takes to be successful. Instead of me having to be like, “Well son, you should have seen me while I was actually away from you and I didn’t get a chance to be a good dad to you. So you know, I’m sorry about, Hey, I made you rich, you know, and your family. It’s powerful.”

Instead of that, I am showing them what the route looks like. If they want to travel, if they want to be successful, they know what it takes, they know the energy that it requires for them to be successful themselves. You’ve got to find that balance, that chemistry.

Rob: I think you came from a space where a lot of entrepreneurs start, they want something more for themselves and they’re growing, but they’re at those very beginning stages. I mean, you talked about bankruptcy, you talked about kind of a low point in your life into a point now, I don’t know if you reflect back and think of this success, but you’re at a point now to where you’ve come along far away from that point.

A lot of entrepreneurs are struggling trying to balance that, trying to negotiate money. Are there certain things that you did or they can do today that don’t necessarily take money or don’t necessarily take a whole lot of time, but do get attraction like on social media or some of the things that they need to on social media?

Manuel: Well, one thing that I can do is that I can tell you, especially in this era is we provide a lot of value to them. So if you allow me to do something, I’ll share something on the screen with them very quickly here which is basically what I call my COVID-19 Survival Battle Plan.

Just so you know, full disclaimer for everybody here. This is not just only for COVID-19. This has been my formula from the beginning. From day one this has been my exact formula of how I’ve succeeded in the subject of social media advertising, social media marketing, building eCommerce brands, selling hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for some of the most incredible people, including my own brands.

This is how I built everything on my agency, my client accounts, and all of them. It just became that much more important in today’s environment. And I can quickly go over the formula and and you’ll know exactly how to operate because your question, Robert is a good question.

How do you operate in social media?

Well, the first thing that I want everybody to know is that you want to communicate with omnipresence. You have been given the chance as a human being to be part of an era that has something that our grandparents never even dreamed about having, that any other ancestors in our entire history couldn’t actually leverage.

We have that. We are the first generation to be able to press a couple of buttons and talk to the universe just like that. Not the universe yet, but at least the world for sure. Guaranteed.

So we can press a couple of buttons on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Instagram TV, on Instagram stories, on Facebook stories, on TikTok, on Messenger, on WhatsApp. The list goes on and on, right? It’s about 10, 12 platforms that are really dominating the attention in the world today.

You want to communicate through omnipresence.

This doesn’t mean that it’s only for people that have money

Because if you are watching this Facebook live or this webinar, it’s highly likely that you have a cell phone bill that you’re up to date and you’re able to afford.

If you have a cell phone bill, congratulations, you qualify. If you’re up to date and you have a bill and you haven’t been disconnected, you can do this.

You can have a free account on Facebook and Instagram. You can have a free account on LinkedIn and you can communicate with omnipresence. Now people ask me,

‘So what should I talk about?”

Well, what’s the reality? What is your reality?

In today’s COVID-19 world, you want to talk about how people can succeed in this era. How can they survive? How can they be better? How can you actually give them some value from your expertise?

I like to call that figuring out, Robert, what is your super power? You’ve got to figure that out because we all have one. And you might not believe that at this point. You might feel that all you have is a product, but I beg you to look into it.

Rob: I have tidy-whities. That’s my superpower.

Manuel: You got tidy-whities but that’s actually a fabric, right? That’s actually a fabric.

There has to be some actual human super skill that you can do. Look at you for example, Robert. You’ve got a superpower. You brought me into your interview. I have influence. That’s an ability.

Even like for example there’s one of the biggest podcast out there in the world. The name is John Lee Dumas. He has a podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire.

His superpower is gathering power and having them interviewed and asking them questions that provide value to the world.

What a great superpower. He doesn’t really do superpowers himself. He just figured it out with his superpower how to grab other people of influence, put them in front of his microphone and have them talk to the world. He’s built a multi-million-dollar empire by doing that.

Rob: If I could actually add to that, it’s not really a superpower, my end. It was just like, “Hey Gabby, let’s ask Manuel to be part of this event, this Facebook live thing we’re doing.” And you just said yes. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs out there hold themselves back because they think, what will the outcome be? Or they will get a no.

Or they’ll be intimidated because you do have some credentials behind your name. People get shy and they don’t they don’t fall through with that. So that’s one of those learning lessons that I just want to make sure we stick a pin in on there, too.

Manuel: Absolutely. There’s a fear that makes people hold back and not reach towards their goals and that’s what you need to handle. And that’s why I said that the first thing when I was talking to you guys in the beginning, if you’re joining late or whatever, you might’ve missed this once. You need to watch the replay.

You need to make sure that you’re convinced that you can be better.

If you’re absolutely convinced that you have reached the summit and you cannot get yourself better, and that’s the end of your expansion, then you have an absolute problem. That is the end of it. That’s the end of your road.

You have to convince yourself that you can get better. And if you do, then,

you start reaching more.

You start accomplishing more and doing more with yourself because it’s that important. So the first step is to communicate with omnipresence, meaning that you need to be everywhere.

People ask me, Robert, they say, “Manuel, I got it. I got to talk everywhere, right? I got to be on Instagram, on Facebook, on Instagram, TV on YouTube. I’ve got to be on stories on Instagram, on Facebook. I’ve got to be on TikTok. I’ve got to be everywhere. And my answer is yes. Now the question is…

“How much should I do?”

“Is there a point in which it’s too much?”

The answer is:

How much do you want it?

How badly do you want to get closer to your dreams and goals?”

And depending on your answer is going to be followed with:

That’s how much you need to do.

If you really want it, you’ve got to be as aggressive as possible. If you really, really have big goals and dreams, you’ve got to make sure that your actions match your ambitions. Otherwise, it’s hypercritical and you’re not going to be able to accomplish results.

So you’ve got to have that in mind. If you want to build a million-dollar-company, a billion-dollar-company, make sure that your actions match your ambitions because that’s going to be essential for you to be able to actually get results.

So,

1. Communicate with omnipresence

2. Talk with reality

In COVID-19, you want to tell them how you can help them through these tough times based on your superpower. And that’s why these next few steps are all connected.

3. Be a stabilizing influence

There are two types of people in this world, Robert. Only two types. There are Debbie Downers – the ones that are in agreement with the media, the ones that enjoy seeing the bad news, the ones that are like all doom and gloom and we’re all going to die, and there’s going to be Walking Dead.

And then there’s the optimist – the ones that are always looking at the future can be brighter. We can expand, we can get better. Let’s figure out how to accomplish more with our time. Let’s stop wasting our time. Let’s stop binge-watching House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Narcos, whatever it is that you’re into, and start figuring out how you can be better and expand yourself.

You’ve got to choose which side you are on

Generally, anybody that’s here is going to be on the side that is going to be pro survival, expansion, accomplishments, growth, et cetera. So if you’re there, then, you’ve got to be a stabilizing influence to people and help people out along the way.

How do you do that?

4. Provide value

In my case, Robert, I have been opening up my doors in COVID-19 to my closed programs.

I have been letting people get trained. I have been giving Facebook lives and YouTube lives and content every day. I have been just out there aggressively more energized than ever showing people how to be successful in this era and providing value.

Doing this formula, what it allows me to do is that I have a huge audience that is growing every day.

I have a big Messenger list, I have a big email list, and I have more people that I can sell things to. And if you look at this formula, there is a step between building audiences and selling. And that step is…

6. Become a marketing expert

Why? Because if you build audiences and you don’t know how to sell to people, then you’re not going to monetize your products or services. You’re simply not going to. So you’ve got to know how to sell. So you’ve got to become a marketing expert.

So you’ve got to figure out your content, your superpower, how are you going to communicate.

• Facebook lives
• YouTube lives
• Instagram
• Content everyday
• Articles
• Podcasts
• Video

As much as possible, and just give that value away. Give it away, talk to the world, educate, inspire, entertain, and whatever it is that you can do from your area of expertise and do it as aggressively as possible.

Doing this is going to give you a big audience. And now you’ll become a marketing expert.

• You do Facebook training
• You understand how the platforms work
• You understand the Facebook Business Manager
• How to capture attention
• How to build digital audiences

So you can retarget them and now you can sell your products and services to these people that, as you can see here on step number seven, the final step is to…

7. Sell only to your best audiences and existing customer base

And by doing that, you will be able to now monetize your products and services because you’ve done such a great job of generating this perception of who you are, that people are going to believe in whatever you have to offer.

If you go straight for the sale, “Hey, buy my products and buy my services and buy my…” “Hey, you need to buy a house from me.” If you’re a realtor or whatever it is, then you’re missing out on the value of building a relationship.

Because when you do that, Frank Suarez, Grant Cardone, Dr. Eric Berg, myself, and all these people that you guys might have heard about along the way, they all have people that have believed in their message along the way because they have provided so much value.

So now we have this ever-growing list of people that we can sell to so our pond to fish is way bigger than anybody else that is trying to just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Does that make sense?

Rob: Absolutely. And you know, that’s one of the classworks that our last class last month was speaking that, you know, exploring personal value and how to do that in person. And so the challenge for Our Network is it’s highly been a person involved, in person communication. And now we’re on this platform.

So I hate to cut it a little bit short. We got about way less than 20 minutes to complete some questions. And I know that there’s some people out there like my friend Crystal who’s starting her Troller Revolution business. So hashtag Troller Revolution, that was a free plug Crystal cause you’re online.

She’s starting her business and trying to figure out ways to generate that audience. But I want to do a question and answer session cause we have, like I said, just a little over 15 minutes left. I’m going to have Violet text any questions that people have in the audience from Facebook. I do have some ones that people couldn’t attend. And so if you could just give a quick answer to some of these regarding Facebook maybe it’ll answer some of the other questions that people have.

Rob: So from Juana, from Chandler, I was told we need to use emojis. Why and how do we use them

Manuel: Okay, well, on Facebook, now we’re getting into the… That’s a big shift of a subject, right? How do we get into the practical…

Rob: The mindsets of this…

Manuel: The practical side of emojis. Who’s the person? What’s the name of the person?

Rob: Juana from Chandler.

Manuel: Juana. It’s very simple. If you use the Facebook Business Manager, for example, to create advertising you can actually just place your emojis with your copy. Facebook has not made it easier, but now, if you use facebook.com, right now they have incorporated emojis in your copy.

The reason why you want to use emojis, why they are valuable is because

Emojis just stand out. They capture attention.

Manuel: It’s as simple as that. It’s attention, attention-grabbing. So you want to make sure that you incorporate any elements that can help you capture attention. There are websites that you can search. For example, if you look at, there’s one that’s called fbemoji.com. Literally that’s the website. There’s another one that’s called emoji pedia.

Again, I don’t have a course on emojis, so I apologize. But it’s a very simple thing to incorporate. I mean, even if you Google Facebook emojis, literally just Google it, you’re going to have a series of websites that are going to pop up that you can use to find the emojis that you’re gonna incorporate – sad face, smiley face, money symbols, whatever it is, that you can put into your copy. I like to use them a lot because they do attention-grabbing. That’s all. They capture attention.

The name of my company is AGM. It stands for Attention Grabbing Media. Why? Because I’m obsessed with capturing attention. So anything that you can do to capture attention, then, you want to utilize it because it’s going to help you get more results. So absolutely, yes. You want to definitely get that incorporated into your content strategy, organic one and into your paid strategy also, which is two separate things.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And as we get into more questions, you know, for the people in the audience too, I think as Manuel and I have talked, we’ve kind of talked on more of an aggregate level of things from internal things you need to work on yourself to influence your business. That’s highly what Our CEO Network has been formulated around.

I know that some of these questions, especially as I’m looking at them now, are practical and I think a lot of people want those kinds of quick bite kind of things. But I will say at the end of the day, it’s all about growth. It’s all about learning and challenging yourself.

So as we go to the next question, Sandra from Mesa. “I see TikTok and SnapChat as other places to set up social media. How much time should I devote to each? I think you’ve kind of answered that. Is Facebook eventually going away?”

Manuel: Wow. Facebook is here to stay. Facebook is here to stay. They are a $500, a $100 billion corporation now. I’ve seen them grow. The more people doubt them, the more they figure out how to keep on growing. It’s not just Facebook. People forget about that.

Facebook is an empire

Manuel: Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp. They have virtual reality technology. They have a lot of companies. These guys are beasts. They are here to stay.

They are one of the top five most valuable companies on planet earth.

1. Amazon
2. Microsoft
3. Apple
4. Google
5. Facebook.

These guys have a lot of money. They can pretty much buy any company and not even feel it. So when you have that much money and you have that much intelligence in your organization, you’re here to stay.

And trust me, 2019 was the hardest year that they’ve ever experienced because they were heavily, heavily attacked with privacy scandals. And despite the privacy scandals, they broke records after records, after records. There are revenue records. So they are here to stay. So you better learn it because either you use it to make more income and get more attention or somebody else will and it’s going to be eventually too late for you to be able to capture the attention there.

Right now, it’s early in the game. They’re figuring out more placements, more opportunities. They’re figuring out more ways to help you capture attention. So definitely pay attention to the platform because it’s going to be here for the next several years dominating attention.

And even now after COVID-19, they have kicked it up a notch when it comes to attention on these platforms. They have more attention than anybody else out there, that’s for sure.

Rob: Yeah. And from my experience, I’m sharing out there that video is tending to be the thing that all these platforms are gearing towards. So not just posts, it really is video content. The shorter, the better. The more eye catching, the better. The more attention-grabbing, the better. Manuel, do you see those questions coming in from Violet there?

Manuel: I see the questions. Okay. So I see Linda Jackson’s. “If you are starting a business, what is the best way to promote your business besides Facebook?” Let me answer that one.

It depends

Manuel: If you’re starting your business and you have an advertising budget, then Facebook is the best way to go about it. Because Facebook is the cheapest platform and it depends if your audience is there. Generally they are. Even the younger ones are there. The younger people, they have a huge 18 to 25 year old demographic. But it really does depend.

You’ve got to look at your customer base. Chances are:

people are actively on Facebook.

I mean, I have business that focuses on the 65 and older community. They’re called Senior Healthcare Direct and I have helped them for a long time. Their focus is to sell Medicare gap insurances to people over 65, 65 and over. And they spend $300,000 in advertising a month on Facebook. So it depends.

If you don’t have a budget, then Facebook continues to be the number one option. Why? Because Facebook, Instagram, and I would not say Facebook only.

If you’re starting a new business. This is a very incomplete question. Let me tell you why. Let’s say that it’s a product business, and I’m specifically talking to Lindsey Jackson. Let’s say that it is a product business. Well, the best place to start your business is on Amazon because Amazon already has over a hundred monthly million unique buyers. There’s a hundred million people there ready to buy and they’re searching for your products. And because of that, if you have a low budget or no budget, you’re going to have a little bit of budget to be able to buy inventory for your product. But if you have a very low budget, you could just put your products on Amazon, learn ranking strategies and off you go.

That is the easiest way to scale and create a cash generating machine. If you have a product or service and you don’t have an advertising budget, then the answer will be different because in that case, there is no better way on Facebook.

In that case, we go back to the first step of the seven-step formula, which is omnipresence. You’ve got to go to that formula. If you’re starting a business, you’ve got to apply that formula.

Omnipresent, talk with reality, provide value. You’ve got to find that super power and give it to the world and communicate that value to them and build audiences because these are the ones that you are going to be able to sell to. I’m sorry.

There is no easy way.

Doing entrepreneurship is not an easy path.

You want to know what’s an easy path? Flipping burgers on McDonald’s or having a job at Walmart. That’s easy.

I’m not saying that people don’t get tired working out at McDonald’s or Walmart. Nine to five is probably very tiring, but you don’t have to think about all the logistics and the complexities and the business strategies and all these things. At the same time, your income is extremely capped. Your freedom is also extremely capped.

So entrepreneurship, there’s a saying out there that says something like,

“Why do I work 60 hours a week or 80 hours a week? So I don’t have to work 40 hours a week for the rest of my life”

Or something like that. I don’t know who said that. I’m not quoting anybody specifically, but I’ve seen that. Why do you work 80 hours a week as an entrepreneur? That’s ridiculous.

I work 80 hours a week because I hate the idea of working 40 hours a week the rest of my life. I’m trying to get away from that nine to five.

If you want something safe and secure, that’s definitely not entrepreneurship.

If you want to do entrepreneurship, it’s almost like a baseball player, right? What does a baseball player do? He’s trying to get on base three out of 10 times. If he’s able to get on base, man, this guy is a hall of famer. He’s going to go into the hall of fame and he’s going to be recognized as one of the best players of all time and he’s a rock star.

Entrepreneurship is like that! You’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to go battle it. You’ve got to put in a lot of hard work. You don’t know if you’re going to succeed. You’re going to probably lose money in many cases. You’re going to hire wrong people. You’re going to screw up. You’re going to mess up. You’re going to stand up and go again and hey, welcome to our world. Welcome to Our CEO Network.

If you’re a CEO, it means that you’re an entrepreneur. Make sure that you’re ready for a battle because entrepreneurship is a battle. You’re going to war to try to succeed in this world and that’s all part of it.

But follow that formula. That formula will apply to you whether you are starting a new business or not.

• If it’s a product business, Amazon 100% with a low budget.
• If it’s a product business with a big advertising budget, Facebook, a hundred percent go all-in on Facebook right now.
• If it’s a service or a product, you’ve got to be omnipresent. You’ve got to provide a lot of value and figure out how you’re going to educate people, inspire people, entertain people so you can capture attention so they can buy your product.

Rob: Sounds good. So we have about five minutes left. So maybe one or two questions. Crystal had another question there at the bottom.

Manuel: Okay. So we got Crystal. Crystal says, best copywriting books for social media or learning platforms you recommend for social media. Okay, well, here’s my pitch non pitch for you guys because I’m not selling anything right now. My strategy has not been to promote products in this era. It’s been about providing value.

A few weeks ago I rolled out my $2000 course and I gave it out to the world for free. I opened up my doors. So if you want to find out how to become a social media expert, you can sign up to my course, which is right now free until April 30th. You can sign up and get access to the course for free, no credit cards, no upsells, no customer journey down the line, funnels to sell you on something.

Do you guys want to get access to that? manuelsuarez.com/expansion. And that’s my roadmap and I sold that for thousands of dollars for many years. I’m going to share my virtual background here and show you inside my office at AGM.

That thing that you see right there hanging on the wall, that is what they like to call the Two Comma Club award. So, one of my courses, which is the Facebook Masters Course sold millions of dollars over the last two years and it was a big revenue driver for our agency. I am walking the talk and I provide value to the world and I give people access to it. So if they want to sign up, manuelsuarez.com/expansion, check that out.

And I’m sure that my good friends at Our CEO Network, if you ask them, they will give you that link again.

Copywriting books, I never studied copywriting myself. I know people that have, and copywriting is a skill that you can learn and you can acquire. I am naturally a good copywriter and that happened to me with a lot of practice and a lot of learning. I teach on my course, copywriting, especially for social media. I know there’s a good course out there.

I don’t know if I have one of my guys here. Remember Devon? I think Devon is here. Devon, maybe in the next four minutes you should, I know Devon is here on the webinar, so maybe Devon can ask Jorge, “Jorge, what is the name of the copywriting book that they recommend? Him and Jesus or whatever. And then we can recommend that because I know some of my guys have studied it. I never did. I was lucky enough that one of my superpowers is the ability to write. And I have been developing that with a lot of work and that’s something that gets better with time. Yes. But I’ll see. Devon can post it in here.

Rob: Yeah. And Crystal, one of the books that I explored and I’ll share with you personally too when I see you again, because I know I will is JSO got social media ecology is a good reference book as far as like how to navigate through some of the social mediocrity there is out there along with social media.

But unfortunately, Mr. Suarez, we’re coming to the near end of our journey today and I actually had a billion more questions, but I didn’t get to really maybe 10% of them. I did want to ask you about your family.

Manuel: I talk a lot. I talk a lot. I do talk a lot, Robert.

Rob: A little bit. That’s okay. But again, I want to reiterate that there are no excuses. Your dad is how old? How old is your dad, Manuel?

Manuel: He turned 70 in January, this year. 70.

Rob: So, this man, he’s got his YouTube channel. He’s got 2.4 million subscribers. I verified it, I checked it yesterday. So age is not an excuse. But like I said, we come to the end and if you have any specific questions, you want to do another plug real quick, Manuel? Your website and where can they find you?

Manuel: Yeah, if they want to, they can follow me. I’m omnipresent. I do walk the talk. If you guys want to check out my content, just check me out, Manuel Suarez, on any social media platform except SnapChat. I haven’t done anything there. I don’t do a lot of Twitter. Everything else I’m everywhere, even TikTok. You’ll find me there.

Check out my course. Check out my program. If you’re watching this after the 30th, you’re going to have to pay a couple of thousand dollars for it because that’s what the course has gone through throughout its existence. But if you want to check out my course, you can check it out at manuelsuarez.com/expansion and keep on getting yourself educated, keep on going, keep on moving forward. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what success looks like.

Rob: And me, Robert Morales, Our CEO Network, ourceonetwork.com Instagram, Facebook. We got LinkedIn @ ourceonetwork, but we’ve come to the two o’clock hour. And like I said, if you were here all the way to the end, we do have a giveaway to give you guys.

Manuel: Devon already posted it. Sorry, Devon already posted. Copywriting Secrets, Robert. Copywriting secrets by Jim Edwards.

Rob: Awesome. So the giveaway for Our CEO Network today is a seminar and a $50 video production for your business. There are some caveats to that. So you have to be a registered business as well as provide your Arizona Corporation Commission tax ID. And then you have to be either a resident of Phoenix, Arizona or come to the Phoenix area and we will film your video production up to $750 value for the first person that can answer these three questions.

So you have to answer who are the founding members of Our CEO Network. You have to let me know what each their primary business is. And then if you go to Inside Productions YouTube channel, there is American Ninja warrior. There was a video that we did back in March. If you can tell me the name of that participant.

With all those three questions answered, you will get a video production at our expense through Inside production. So founding members of Our CEO Network, their primary businesses, and then the name of the gentlemen in Inside Production’s YouTube channel. So you could always play that back and write those down.

But I want to thank Mr. Suarez for his time. I know his time is valuable. He’s off in Florida, we’re off here in Arizona and I know other people maybe watching from other parts of the world. So definitely never, not enough time ever. You know, I would agree that anytime I’ve done an interview it’s just you want to know more and you’re dying to know more. But I’m so glad that we can follow you on your YouTube.

And like I said, go follow his dad because his dad is awesome. He’s a beast to 2.4 million subscribers and he talks about health, right? Metabolism.

Manuel: Health, metabolism. Now, you’ve got to be good at Spanish though because he does speak in Spanish.

Rob: That’s my fault. I’m called the office coconut because I look like I know Spanish but I really don’t.

Manuel: You don’t? You have a name like you know Spanish.

Rob: Yeah. I get a lot of crap all the time, but that’s a different story. So thank you sir. Our CEO Network, Mr. Suarez. We will chat later.

Manuel: Thank you for having me guys. Have fun. Keep going.

Rob: Thank you.