Podcast Description

Building an agency came by accident for Manuel. He had learned how to use Facebook marketing to explode his Amazon bed sheets business and after he sold that he was confident he could help other people do the same for their businesses.

In this podcast, you’ll hear about:

Setting expectations, The importance of constant client communication, Why you should spend client’s money as if it’s your own, Aspects of team building unless you always want to do all the work yourself, Training for that team, and Why being obsessed can be a good thing.

 

Podcast File

Tips For Building An Agency From Manuel’s Experiences

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Podcast Transcription

 

INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone. This is Jimmy, the associate creative director for Manuel here at AGM. And welcome back to the Facebook Marketing Ninja podcast.

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our new listeners as well. So hit subscribe to get the latest and greatest tips and tricks on social media marketing.

Building an agency came by accident for Manuel. He had learned how to use Facebook marketing to expand his Amazon bedsheets business. And after he sold that he was confident he could help other people do the same for their own businesses.

So in this episode, you’ll hear Manuel talk about:

• Setting expectations.
• The importance of constant client communication.
• Why you should spend the client’s money as if it were your own.
• Aspects of team building, unless you want to do all the work yourself.
• How to train that team and.
• Why being obsessed can be a good thing.

Check it out.

 

Setting Expectations

I want to give you some final tips on the world of having an agency. All right.

And I’m going to put them on a whiteboard since I’m here with you guys right now. And I want to show you a little bit about this, just because things that I had in mind in regards to, I know things that have been successful for me on a marketing agency.

The number one most important thing that you can ever have in the world of building an agency, the number one determining factor to your success is EXPECTATIONS.

If you were, if you were to ask me, what is the biggest mistake that you have made in your agency building career, which right now spans, it’s October 2020. My agency has been already established since 2015. So it’s five years.

In 2017, we structured a partnership, that it’s what started it all, me Ernesto, Jorge, the chief marketing officer, that was 2017.

So in all these processes and all these years, the number one factor that I have made the biggest mistakes on is expectations.

Me being a super excited and passionate person, very dedicated to the world of marketing and helping people and getting them to spread the message far and wide so they can grow their business. I used to come with my head held up high to talk about how incredible our marketing is and how much we’re going to help them grow an empire.

And that is my biggest mistake, because you need to set the expectations right from the top.

Marketing is so fast-moving, so fast-paced and so difficult in many, many ways that it’s not something that you can promise to a client.

So don’t ever promise to a client!

 

The way that I start my conversations with clients is always like look…

“We’re going at this together. We’re doing this, you and me together. We’re going to work on this and we’re going to find out if we can make work.”

You are risking it. I am risking it. Why?

Because I’m going to try everything that I can to help you become successful.

Because if I make it successful, my organization grows. If I don’t, we don’t grow.

So your success is really important to me.

 

Expectations from the start are very important

Do not promise certain numbers

Say we’re going to go at it together and we’re going to try. And people sometimes say, “But Manuel, you’ve got to guarantee me something.”

NOPE, there’s no guarantees.

If you’re looking for guarantees, you’re looking in the wrong place because I’m not giving you any guarantees.

You want to look at my testimonials? You want to go to AGM agency.com and look at my case studies and everything that we’ve done over the years?

You want to see all of that? Go for it. I want to give you everything that we got so you can make a decision in regards to, can you trust us?

Yes or not, but I’m not going to sell you on a dream that I can not for sure guarantee that I can deliver on this.

If you don’t manage those expectations, that could be one of the most destructive things to your organization.

A person that comes in, loses all their money and because of you, they’re in trouble financially, they can hurt you and destroy your business.

So make sure you manage expectations from the start. Have that as part of your process, it’s very important. Like Jason says:

 

There’s no such thing as a bad client, there’s only a bad process and a bad prospect.

You got to make sure that people are willing to go to battle with you.

 

It’s like if you go to a casino, make sure that you’re willing to put a thousand dollars on red or black and lose them and never see them again. Because if you go there and you say, “Here’s a thousand dollars, if I lose this thousand dollars, I’m not gonna be able to survive, feed my family and I’m going to die probably.”

You shouldn’t be doing that. So when it comes to marketing, make sure that when you’re working with a client, they’re willing to go for the battle with you. And if it doesn’t work, shake hands and move forward, and you guys are friends, because it is marketing.

You will not be able to succeed every single time.

You’re not going to be able to save every single case. And that’s not the way it is, expectations.

Number two, I would say second, most important aspect. And this is something that I also learned the hard way. Communication.

 

The Importance of Constant Client Communication

You have to be able to communicate to your client consistently. And I talk about this to my account managers and to my staff every day, more communication all the time.

Sometimes we are bragging within our organization about what we’re doing for a client and we forget to brag to our clients.

 

You got to let them know what you’re doing.

You gotta be in constant communication.

 

You gotta let them know that you really care about their business, almost as much as they do. That has to be your attitude. You got to make them a believer in your dedication towards their business. So communication is going to be key.

This is something that I’ve learned also the hard way. Some people have not gotten communication from us in weeks and then the next communication that I get is a letter them firing us, even though we have been working so hard, I’ve given them quality results on the world of marketing.

So make sure that you’re communicating with your client consistently. If you can send an email out every day, with a report at the beginning of the day, as to what happened the day before and a report at the end of the day, with what happened that same day, over-communication. Unless a client tells you, “I don’t want this much.” Is going to be the key to keeping that relationship long term.

Make sure you’re keeping that in place, communication. You can have systems, you can have an email line, you can have a text message line, you could have zoom calls, whatever it is that you may have, that is going to help you communicate with your clients, keep that in place.

 

Why you should spend client’s money as if it’s your own

Another point that I will tell you, protect money.

Money is one of the most emotional objects in this universe. Money can create emotions at will. Lack of money, destruction of money, creation of money, all of it.

This is a big deal, and you got to make sure that you treat every single dollar that this client has trusted you with, you gotta treat it as if it was your dollars.

 

And something that I have done with my organization is

that I have ingrained that as a culture.

 

When you’re spending a dollar, you gotta feel like you’re spending a dollar from your own pocket. If you have that feeling, then you’re going to protect that money we have…

And this is I’m talking about these are mistakes that I have made along the way. Many times I have had account managers and people in my organization just spending money at will, thinking that it’s growing from a tree and they can go ahead and spend it because they need to test things.

Yes, you need to test things and that’s okay. It’s important to get data, and that’s all part of the process. But if you’re testing without protecting the money, you’re going to get in trouble. And that is the one thing that can get a client more upset and enraged with you than anything else out there that could possibly be done to their account.

Protecting their money, as if it was your hard-earned dollars, is an absolute must. So you want to have that in place, make sure that you keep that point in.

 

The Aspects of Team Building

All right, another point, team building.

If you are on your own, then that’s a different story, but you got to know that you’re going to be highly limited if you are not getting help along the way.

So in my case, the first moment that I decided to get help along the way and bring somebody and educate them on what I was doing was the moment that I started to expand.

Without that help, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.

 

IMPORTANT: Team build and connect with them.

We have daily staff meetings every day with our staff. I have 70 people on our organization. Some of them are on this call, some of them are interested in the world of marketing. Hopefully, a lot of them are because we are a marketing agency, it’s not just a job.

We’re creating an impact on the lives of all these people, team building every single day and getting everybody on the same page.

We have a staff meeting every day at 9:30 AM, and we have our team connected over zoom. Our different teams are connected all day long.

This is something that, again, we learned the hard way about this.

We have a remote team, it’s 70 staff, we got 20 people local, and we got people spread out throughout the world.

Because of that, I’m trying to create the same feeling that you get from working with people on the same building. That’s what I’m trying to do, zoom is my solution.

For example, after the staff meeting at 9:30 AM, in which we have the different heads of the divisions give a briefing. For example, I have the creative head give a briefing on what’s happening in the creative department. I have the chief marketing officer giving a briefing on what happening with the accounts. I have the chief operations officer giving a briefing on the agency overall.

I have the Administrative Officer giving a briefing on human resources and other things after that. Then we break into rooms and we have the marketing room, the account manager room, we have the creative room and all of these people are working together throughout the day and they’re seeing each other all the time

 

Team building

Everybody else knows what everybody else is doing at all times.

 

So that is a very important part of the process.

Alright, so something that I loved about what Jason said today on the interview was that his staff is more important than his clients. I am a hundred percent in agreement with that and I have said that myself many, many times.

So part of the team building process is making sure that your staff are doing well and they’re moving upwards and they’re expanding and they’re increasing their own abilities and they’re accomplishing their own goals personally and as a group member. Team building is a part of it.

 

How to Train Your Team

Another point, Training.

And, I have a lot of advice, individual advice for all of these areas.

For example, for team building, they, there are platforms that you can use that are going to be valuable for that zoom.

I have another platform that I’ve used for many years now, and it’s called Time Doctor.

And with that platform I have people check-in, clock in, clock out and I always know what they’re doing and what they’re working on. So there’s no mystery in regards to production. And it’s a great platform for management.

And then I have things like 24/7 virtual assistant.com, va.com. This website allows me to find people that I can bring into my team and they can help me with different things.

So Training. All right. One thing that I do consistently is every single week I train my staff, because I want to get everybody on the same page and people are connected.

So we’re operating under the same roof and we’re operating under the same technology, right? So that’s very important to implement with your team.

For a long time I actually had a disconnection, and when you had a disconnection from your team everybody’s running their own show. And because of that, you’re not getting uniform results across the board. So very important to train your team.

These are the main things that I would tell you that you want to have in place.

• Expectations need to be set from the beginning.
• You’ve got to have a lot of communication with clients.
• You’ve got to protect the client’s money as if it was your hard-earned daughters. As if you feeding your own family, depended on your results on it, Team building training.
• And I would add one more thing that I think is very important for everybody. And this is something that I have actually myself had throughout my existence, as an entrepreneur, Obsession.

 

Why Obsession Can Be a Good Thing

I used to have a slogan that I changed, but my first website said, “AGM agency.com” and he says, “Obsessed with results.” Obsession with results.

These people are coming to you because they believe in your marketing skill. And because of that, you want to make sure that you deliver on that belief. Otherwise, people are not going to talk well about you, and it’s only going to hurt your brand.

I can tell you that the person that has referred to me, the most people in history, is Dr. Eric Berg.

This individual has believed in me for years. And because of that, he has given me a lot of power. He has referred people left and right and he keeps on doing this for years and years to back me. Why? Because I have been obsessed with results on his account.

If I didn’t have this obsession, then I wouldn’t be getting all this power from him.

So very important for you guys to have that obsession and intensity to be able to accomplish a particular result is crucial for building an agency.

This is how you do it along the way guys. If you get, if you come up with different systems, that’s going to help you.

We, for the last two and a half years, we didn’t have a CRM. We now have a $200,000 software that we use to manage our clients and our communications and our systems.

We didn’t start there. We’ve invested a lot of energy into systems on the way, but the systems are not how you start. You start with this, passion, dedication, learning. You gotta become an expert. You gotta become a marketing doctor.

If you are not in my coaching program, you better sign up to the Coaching Program, manuelsuarez.com/coaching should take you there.

And if you do that, you’re going to be able to have a knowledge that people are going to pay for. And that’s intellectual property, because now you can go to people and be like, “Hey, I want to help you and this is your opportunity right now. And I can build you a messenger channel and I can do your social media content, and I can build your eCommerce.”

And I can do a Shopify site for you. And I can do all that stuff.”

 

Why? Because you have

intellectual property.

 

This is the new era of knowledge right now. You don’t have to go for a marketing degree. You don’t have to go to university. You simply go out there and get knowledge.

And with this knowledge, you sell that knowledge to people and you’re going to do great by execution of that knowledge. If you follow this formula, expectations, communication, protect money, Team building, Training, and get an obsession with results. All right. Obsession with results.

All right, guys. So I hope that you guys enjoy today’s podcast. Today’s Facebook live, YouTube live, wherever you might be hanging out. And I apologize for any technical difficulties. I think we got the value, we got the message out, you guys get an idea on how to go about doing that.

I wanted to bring Jason Swenk today, because Jason is so knowledgeable in that field that I know he can guide you if you guys decide to go down that route, and that will be something that you can use to earn some extra money that I’m sure is needed in this era.

Last thing that I will tell guys, is that I am building a community on text message, and I want you guys to text me, (813) 212-2196. Any questions that you have? I am answering these questions myself. (813) 212-2196.

They do not go somewhere else. They go to me and only me to see that focuses. No, that doesn’t have power focus.

That is my app right there. So I am getting these questions myself. Nobody else, No moderating, nothing. It’s not a bot. It’s not a spam engine, it’s not a sales machine. I’m not looking to sell you anything. I want to help you guys and build a community with you. (813) 212-2196.

Give me a call. Not a call because you’re not gonna be able to reach me with a phone call, but send me a text message. You can say anything. Hello? Hi. This is my business. I want help with this. Where should I start? What should I do? Whatever the case may be.

And I want to help you every single one of you guys until I get to a point in which I’m overwhelmed and I cannot answer any more messages.

But right now I can tell you that I’m answering every single one of the messages that are coming into this platform. So eight one three, that sounds like an infomercial, right? (813) 212-2196. I always want it to be a part of an infomercial. But I didn’t.

All right guys, so hopefully you enjoyed it. It’s been an hour and a half now. We had some technical difficulties, but we made it. All right. So I’ll see you guys.

Christian, do we know who we have next week already? Oh, next week. Oh, in the social marketing hour we have Jay Cami, who’s an AGM agency client, who has accomplished massive success growing his e-commerce over the last few months.

He had his business on Amazon for a while, and he has been very successful on Amazon, but we transitioned him over. Also, we added the eCommerce platform on Shopify and he’d be booming.

And want to talk about his success, his story, he has a lot of business acumen and want to give you guys that data. So keep an eye out for links coming out shortly and make sure you mark your calendars. First day, 22nd of October at 10:00 AM EST.

I’ll see you guys next week.