Get ready to shake off the Monday malaise as we bring you Carlos Corona, a dynamo in digital marketing, who redefines the start of the week with 'Money Making Mondays.' His story is a cocktail of ambition and resilience, tracing his journey from Cuban origins to conquering the digital marketing empire. This isn't just another rags-to-riches tale; it's a playbook for those hungry to turn their digital prowess into hard numbers. We cover everything from the roar of networking at Lead Gen World to the whispered secrets behind campaigns that rake in seven figures.
The digital realm's chock-full of tales where entrepreneurs take the leap from humble starts to staggering revenue heights, and we've got the scoop. Whether it's turning a Google Ads mishap into a bonanza or navigating the pitfalls of shiny object syndrome, this episode is a testament to the strategic finesse needed to flourish online. And when it comes to personal branding and the magic of masterminds, we don't just spill the beans—we pour the entire pot, sharing firsthand insights on how authentic industry connections can propel your business forward.
Ever wondered how bilingual campaigns or a well-timed trip to a trade show could amplify your business impact? We're cutting right through the fluff, highlighting the untapped potential of the Hispanic market and dishing out trade show strategies that go beyond the basics. Plus, we reveal how splurging on a private suite can do wonders for your professional relationships. So, plug in to this episode where Carlos and I unpack a treasure trove of actionable advice that's bound to leave you primed for your next big business breakthrough.
Get ready to shake off the Monday malaise as we bring you Carlos Corona, a dynamo in digital marketing, who redefines the start of the week with 'Money Making Mondays.' His story is a cocktail of ambition and resilience, tracing his journey from Cuban origins to conquering the digital marketing empire. This isn't just another rags-to-riches tale; it's a playbook for those hungry to turn their digital prowess into hard numbers. We cover everything from the roar of networking at Lead Gen World to the whispered secrets behind campaigns that rake in seven figures.
The digital realm's chock-full of tales where entrepreneurs take the leap from humble starts to staggering revenue heights, and we've got the scoop. Whether it's turning a Google Ads mishap into a bonanza or navigating the pitfalls of shiny object syndrome, this episode is a testament to the strategic finesse needed to flourish online. And when it comes to personal branding and the magic of masterminds, we don't just spill the beans—we pour the entire pot, sharing firsthand insights on how authentic industry connections can propel your business forward.
Ever wondered how bilingual campaigns or a well-timed trip to a trade show could amplify your business impact? We're cutting right through the fluff, highlighting the untapped potential of the Hispanic market and dishing out trade show strategies that go beyond the basics. Plus, we reveal how splurging on a private suite can do wonders for your professional relationships. So, plug in to this episode where Carlos and I unpack a treasure trove of actionable advice that's bound to leave you primed for your next big business breakthrough.
Every Monday in our industry you send the invoices for the previous week. So everybody's like, oh, I hate fucking Mondays. The weekend is so fast. Everybody that works hates Monday. I'm like no, like money making Mondays.
Speaker 2:Fucking payday bro.
Speaker 1:It's payday for me, so I started doing money making Mondays. All right, welcome back to another episode of the let's Fucking Go show.
Speaker 2:Fuck, I love it. Carlos Corona man, we got Carlos on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of let's LFG, let's Fucking Go show, where we're talking to people in the business world that are fucking killing it, not just in business, but in life and always in general. So I'm really happy to have my man, carlos, here with us today. This guy's a legend in the space man. He's doing a lot of big things. He's not only doing digital marketing, he's doing a lot of coaching, helping people get into the space, and he's doing a lot of other things. So we're going to explore how he got into space, what's working for him, what's not working, and we're talking about a lot of other shit that's making shit happen. So let's fucking go, carlos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:We just came from a great show. So yeah, we just came from good continuation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just came from Lead Gen World. It's a conference. In the first time they had it in Florida and whereas in Florida Hard Rock right, it's crazy. Before I walked in here, my voice was all fucked up and, like magically, came back and that was someone, joel, who's with us behind the scenes? If your voice isn't fucked up after a conference, you got bags under your eyes. I got bags under my eyes. That means you didn't fucking hustle hard enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You agree with that? Yeah, totally, totally. It's definitely a lot of work. Yeah, and how do you like the first time in?
Speaker 2:Florida. I liked it, man, at first it was like Sunday night was kind of interesting because I didn't go into the booth area I was setting up. I like that center bar. It reminded me that she had the Lear Bar in Cosmo.
Speaker 1:Right, much so right, yes, yes, way bigger.
Speaker 2:It seemed like there was a lot more space, yeah, but that seemed to be where the action is and a lot of people they make their money. They don't actually go to the actual booths, they just hang out out there, right? I do a combination of both and I like it. There's always a different rotation, like Sunday night was a group of people, right, and then Monday was a different group, but you always have like those steady eddies. There'll be someone that's always at the fucking bar, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's good to see them and then there'll be a new crew, a new cast of characters. So when you haven't seen them fucking years like yo, what's up, you know, and then. So I like any show that's had like a center area, it's pretty, it's really good for networking and shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just talking to a friend from a company that provides capital right and he's entering the performance marketing space. But they want to provide capital lines of credit and stuff like that to paper callers and affiliate marketers. So he was asking me like okay, I'm brand new to this, I'm going to affiliate summit West next week. What do you recommend? And my recommendation was just sit at the channel ear bar.
Speaker 2:Pretty great advice.
Speaker 1:And you will get all the business done that you can possibly think of. And you know, with this show and the hard rock, I felt like it was the same. It was like, like you said, like a bar and everybody was just sitting there and getting business done. It's a great show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean a great show.
Speaker 2:I liked it and I want to talk about that a little later about the importance of trade shows and networking, because I know that's been huge for you, it's been huge for me and, I don't think, a lot of people. I mean, I'm not even fucking joking, I'm talking about if your voice isn't a little fucked up after a show. You didn't work hard enough. Yeah, we'll talk more about that shit later, but first of all, I mean, a lot of people know who you're. Obviously we have a lot of people the same friends in the digital marketing community, but for the people that aren't in that community or they want to get in digital marketing, I want them to know more about who you are, what you, how you got started, that whole thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm originally from Cuba and we came to this country in 1998 and then I finished middle school here, high school, college, but during my college years, I always wanted to make money online. And this is like early 2003, 2004,. Right, I know this is going to sound weird, but I always want to make money by doing nothing. Yeah, right, I was like, yeah, that's life right there. So I had this idea of, like, setting up websites. I was doing my own websites and stuff back then, using like Drupal and I don't know if you remember all those old CMS. Anyways, I was setting up websites and my idea was like, hey, listen, instead of me charging you for the website, instead of being like, hey, pay me X amount of money for the website, I will just provide you with a phone number and then for every phone call that comes in, I'll pay me 25 cents. And that shit didn't work. Right, it was too early, nobody wanted to do it. Everybody was like, no, I'll just pay you whatever you want for your website.
Speaker 2:It's like most things when you start, it doesn't work. You have to keep going.
Speaker 1:This is like 2000,. Early 2000. I won't say 2006, 2007. So it didn't work and I was like whatever? So I went ahead and started, like you know, continue my media buying, but for brick and mortar operations. So I opened a perfume wholesale business and I was dropshipping in the early days. It was amazing. And then I went ahead and opened a logistic company. I opened a recording studio and all of that stuff was because I was able to buy ads, I was able to go to Google and you know, bid and keywords and drive traffic. And you know, after I opened a recording studio which we were doing music for the Spanish industry, we worked with a lot of the very famous unknown artists at the time and currently. But after the studio it was no money in music. Like it was like literally like no money. I was like losing all my money and this was like, well, what am I going to do here? So I hit like a rough patch. You know, when you're at the top and you fall you have to start over again.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what happened to me. And during that starting again process I meet a good friend of mine and he goes hey, man, I'm doing like water restoration and you do. You know what that is. I'm like I have no idea what that is. Like. Water restoration, what's that? What the fuck is that? Yeah, like you know, like people's houses, sometimes they get flooded, like broken pipes, you know the roof collapse, all that stuff. And we go in where you know claims adjusters and we we get them money from the insurance company for their damages. So can you generate some phone calls for that? And I was like, yeah, sure can. And I started again like running ads for water restoration here in South Florida and the business started picking up and we were doing good again and I'm like, oh man, this is good. You know we're making quite a bit of money with all this jobs. Because I wasn't really getting paid for the phone call. I was getting paid a percentage of you know like a rev yeah like a rev share and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So you know, it was, it kept getting good. And I was like, wow, this is really good. But you know, I couldn't help but to see potential expanding, not just South Florida. So I'm like, hey man, why don't we, you know, go do Georgia, why don't we do Texas, why don't we do other states? And then he broke it down to me. That is really complex. You got to get licenses, you got to set up equipment, personnel and stuff like that. So he was just sticking to South Florida.
Speaker 1:But he was like, hey, man, why don't you go online? And then you start looking for other companies that can buy your calls. So this is like 2017. Okay, okay. So I'm like, hmm, interesting. So I went online and then I started looking and I found companies and I start, you know, applying to them as a newbie, like, hey, I know how to do marketing. I just never sold the call to another company. Can you give me a try? And then I'm like, yeah, sure. And then you know I made a little bit money selling calls and I was like, wow, this is really good. How?
Speaker 2:much were you making? When you say a little money, Like what was it exactly?
Speaker 1:It was, it was, it was close to, I mean, like compared to what we do now, it wasn't that much. But I think, like the first week I mean like two grand, and then after that it continued to gradually increase and then that first year that six figures just selling phone calls.
Speaker 2:So I was like, oh yeah, one year to get to that level. Yeah, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say that it was very easy, but because I've been running Google ads since forever, it was just like a little pivot, like okay, instead of me doing this, now I just do it, and I was using some cold tracking software. That it was very simple. It was literally like a menu with four options.
Speaker 2:Yes, compared to the shit now. Compared to the shit now.
Speaker 1:And it was just going and at the end of the month, you got to do a report and stuff like that to see it was definitely interesting, right. And then it kept growing and it kept growing and then I had a moment I should say right. And the moment was like it's so hard for me to do all this stuff and without resources, like I'll go online and then start searching for like tutorials and how to route calls, how to optimize call campaigns, and it's literally like no information available, like in 2018, when I was searching, there was like nothing out there and I said what if I start like putting myself out there like teaching people what is it that I'm doing, with the goal that I will be so transparent that I will earn their business, right, and then it's a win-win situation. I, you know, and I started doing that, so I was always very shy and being in front of the camera, like now, or speaking or anything like that I was always like secret mode.
Speaker 1:You know, you can't find me online. So now I was like, okay, I'm gonna just force myself to be in front of the camera and I'm gonna do it every Monday, because every Monday in our industry, you send the invoices for the previous week. So everybody's like, oh, I hate fucking Mondays. You know like the weekend is so fast, like you know everybody that works hates Monday. I'm like no, like money making Mondays, it's payday, bro.
Speaker 2:It's payday for me.
Speaker 1:I'm, you know, invoicing everybody for the previous week, so I started doing money making Mondays and money making Mondays is just a way of, you know, teaching other people what is it I was doing and, at the same time, promoting like my courses, like to how to learn how to do this, and that's on YouTube, right Money making.
Speaker 1:YouTube, facebook, linkedin, like I stream all over, right, so every Monday at 12, I started doing it and then people will start like watching it. At first it was like literally like nobody, like one or two people watching it, and then it never really did like big numbers, like I never want to say like you know, hundreds of or thousands of people tuning to watch it. But they start watching the replay and then my network start growing, see, more people start joining. I started going more to conferences and it is like, oh, I saw this video that you did and this and that, and thank you so much it helped me out, and I was like, okay, wow, this is kind of cool. You know, people are seeing benefits from this. I'm also seeing the benefits from it. Let's keep going. So we open an inner circle where we, like you know, it was not public, it was just like a small group where I will, you know, show my active campaigns, my revenues, my wins, losses, my tech stack pretty much Pretty bad and ugly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything is like you know, jumping a zoom call and share my screen and okay, let's go. This is what I'm doing right now. And what kind of questions do you have? What is it you're working on? How can I help you? And then there's other people there so it becomes like a weekly mastermind, right, and that started picking up, picking up, and then this year I decided to pause it to take some personal time and stuff because I was getting burned out. But, interesting fact, you know, we probably generated, I would say, close to 10, 12 million years last year.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's fucking sick. Yeah, that's sick. That's beautiful man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from the inner circle. Yesterday we were at dinner. Yeah, and Sexy fish.
Speaker 1:Sexy, yeah, sexy fish and Angkor, came up to me and he goes like from flight course Because, like Carlos, I just got the 25 mils gold club award and I was $6 million short from getting the 50 mil gold club award, and all because of you. I'm like, no, not because of me. I like I show you how to do this stuff but you put it into action. But you know, he's like a prime example of somebody that came in. So when we, when he came into our inner circle, I think he was doing around six mils in revenue.
Speaker 2:Still a good number, right, still amazing Six million revenue, six million a year revenue.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. To like 44 in two years, that's.
Speaker 2:And he's trying to get to 100. He's trying to get to 100. He's motivated bro. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:So you know he started to learn how to effectively buy media and you know how to optimize campaigns and, like him, many other, you know stories of people that came in and started doing it. So that's pretty much like my story in a nutshell and where I'm at right now.
Speaker 2:It was a success for us first, but you kept going right, but you believed in something right and you kept fucking going at it. It was 25 cent calls. I didn't work. You went to the next thing, made a couple grand and I feel like in business it starts with one thing. You make one fucking thing work and then you have a chance to scale it right. You just gotta get that one thing. You gotta stick around for the one thing. Were there any times during that trend, that period, where you're like you felt like giving up, maybe doing a nine to five or like the fuck. You know. You had like self-limiting beliefs or thoughts that you had yeah, yeah, of course. So talk us about this. Where people start know off, you know, yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:So there comes a time that you have, like, you start running your first campaign and you start having results and then, for whatever reason, the campaign dies. And then you try to launch a new campaign. Sometimes that doesn't work. And then you try to launch another campaign and that doesn't work. And then you try and launch another one and it still doesn't work. And then you're like, what the fuck am I doing? Right, maybe I should be doing something else, but it's like you know that next try that maybe you hit it out of the park again.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, like you know, you can't just give up because you had a couple bad losses, right? You gotta always continue to push it forward. And then you continue to educating yourself and learning from what you're doing. Right, like, what did I do wrong here? Was it my problem? Was it a routing problem? Was it a buyer problem? Was it a general market problem? Like, what's going on to strike, figure and out?
Speaker 1:And then you start then picking your offers more wisely. Right, like before, when I'm talking about, you know, setting up campaigns that don't work, it's because I was chasing every rabbit out there, right? So I'm like, oh, you know, go IRA. Yeah, I'll run it. Plumbing, I'll run it. Dental, I run this, I'll run whatever. You give me Time, share, exits, I'll run it right. And then you start running all these campaigns and then be like, oh shit, right. So after, within time, you start looking at things differently. It's like so right now we will only run campaigns. Either the product is free or the caller is getting some type of compensation, or is an emergency call, like. If it doesn't fit those three categories, we will not touch it.
Speaker 2:I love that and I think that one issue in our industry is so they call it shiny object syndrome, and I've done it, you've done what you all have done. It's part of like it comes with the territory. What comes with the territory is that you're gonna fucking lose money in the beginning, you're gonna get fucked, so one's not gonna pay you. You have all these obstacles, right, but shiny object syndrome comes with it. Especially, you go to these shows. We came from a show yesterday like what the fuck? But it comes out of prioritization and, I think, the most successful people in the industry. They narrowed it down to like a couple of things that made a lot of sense for them, right. So where was your first like real breakthrough? Where was the first like campaign where you cracked, let's say, seven figures? I know you're part of the. You guys seen you won awards for Rainbow, the Go Club and that kind of like. What was it and what do you think made it so successful?
Speaker 1:I was a flights campaign. Okay, yeah, that was my first time that I, you know, cracked seven figures on my own.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, it was flights.
Speaker 2:And can you explain flights? I feel, like a lot of people like it took me a while to understand what the fuck go. Can you explain what that is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's flight booking. So people that go online and they're searching for tickets or for the airline because they want to either change their flight, book a new flight or have some type of customer service question right so there are flight consolidators out there, like you know, like, for example, expedia or Travelocity or Kayak right so those are consolidators. Right so they're companies out there that will sell tickets for airlines, so they will buy calls from you. So that was the first campaign. I was just, like you know, tina from Ring Lab. She reached out to me because I said, carlos, you wanna run flights.
Speaker 1:And I was like flights, like who books a flight over the phone.
Speaker 2:Who does that right?
Speaker 1:She said ah, stop laughing. You always laughing Like you know, just look into it. And that was like, hmm, okay, I'll take a look into it, right? And then my daughter had a doctor's appointment and at the time it was like COVID and stuff like that, and only one parent was allowed in the doctor's office, so I'm waiting downstairs, right.
Speaker 1:And when I'm waiting downstairs I have my laptop and connected to my phone, the hotspot, and I'm working on a campaign. So I start setting up a flight campaign, start doing my keyword research I mean I have nothing to do, I'm waiting in the car so I start working on it and then I saved it. And then, you know, I push it live and close my laptop and my baby mama called and said hey, we're ready. I'm like all right, let's do it. And I forgot about it. I definitely forgot that I set up that campaign. I was like whatever, totally forgot about it.
Speaker 1:Like three days later I log into my ring bar and I see like 500 calls from this campaign, all of them disconnected. Oh shit, right, okay. And I was like fuck, what's going on here? Like am I getting spam? And then I log into Google and I see that it was spending money. I, just because I set up the campaign and that said, I closed my laptop, forgot about it. I forgot to connect the targets in the campaign inside ring bar. So the calls were coming in.
Speaker 2:They were just going nowhere. They were going nowhere.
Speaker 1:Wow. I called Tina and I said hey, tina, let's play ball Wow.
Speaker 2:I've been here too, yeah let's play ball.
Speaker 1:She goes are you ready to go? I'm like, yes, give me a DID right away. Yeah, I'm a plug-in right now and I did that and made seven figures in four months. Bro, that's, that's sick, and you know what you? I think that's a great story.
Speaker 2:Cause a lot of people have been like fuck, I lost, you lost money obviously.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You lost probably thousands of dollars on envelope. You lost money. You got to fucking lose money to make money. People are scared to fucking lose money. That comes with the territory, right. So you lose money. But you saw like, bro, I lost money but cause I fucked up or whatever, I forgot about this campaign. And then you connected the dots, like okay, I'm ready to. You got your proof of concept. Yeah, business all about proof of concept. And it showed that it worked right away. So I think that's a that's a fucking tremendous story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it showed that it worked right away and then I was like yeah, it's, I started getting good at you know, running that specific campaign Cause it was a Google campaign.
Speaker 1:So I feel like I'm strongest at Google. So I started, like you know, optimizing them, my keep negative keyword list. I was also using some tools and JavaScript and my landing pages to make things. You know, like my quality score was like phenomenally high and we're doing like dynamic keyword insertions and in the landing page and a whole bunch of stuff. So the campaign was just running Nice, nice, and the big issue was it wasn't 24 seven and I wanted to be 24 seven but no, it was running really nice and that was like the first like big breakthrough as far as like one single camping. Yeah, and it was a big aha moment for me too, Because let's fucking go moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like you know what I got to go harder in what I'm teaching people. Yeah Right, yeah Cause. And then I was talking to my business partner and it was Clayton and we were like, listen, we have to do something like different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we came up with the idea of to do a challenge. We're like.
Speaker 1:Hey, let's do a challenge. All right, a challenge is very simple, very, very simple challenge. For three days I will log into Facebook, stream life how to set up the campaign from start all the way to finish. Right, three days. I say I do this, I can do this. Start there, do that. Then after that, everybody who participate has 30 days. Whoever makes the most revenue in those 30 days wins $10,000. Right, and they're like, just no questions asked. Whoever, you know how many people participated, you know, I want to say like less than a hundred, okay.
Speaker 1:You know, less than a hundred people and it took me four months to make a million dollars with one campaign, like over a million dollars. Once I did the challenge, I think it took us like a week. Yeah, it's incredible To make the same seven figure. And I was like, wow, that is the power of everybody working together right, teamwork, right, and everybody was running the same ads, everything you know, cause they're pretty much just following what I'm teaching them. And then after that, we had this moment like okay, we got to push harder. We have to definitely push harder.
Speaker 1:Let's go, and we haven't stopped since then.
Speaker 2:I love that man, that's fucking great man so bro.
Speaker 2:I think that it just goes to show you right, when you fucking you focus on something like that and you get people around it what they can do and you probably open on it. You probably uncle was probably part of that challenge. I wouldn't be surprised he was. So I said now look at him, put him these big numbers. So that's great. And another thing I want to say is that when you mentioned earlier about you give back a lot to the community, man. That's one thing I love about you. You're very transparent.
Speaker 2:Our industry is pretty and I think every industry is like this. You have some people that are like at the top and they don't want people to know their secrets and you feel like, oh, if I give out the secret sauce, I kind of get it. But I'm a believer and I think you are too that share shit with people, show them, like, how to get there. In fact, no matter, 99% of people aren't gonna fucking do what it takes so you can open the door. Is there a job to walk through the fucking door? And in your case the example with Angkor you open that door and you're so fucking happy that you opened the door for him and then he's credit you for a lot of the success, but he chose to actually apply the principles and do it. So I think, with the money making Mondays, that you've done and you do, and another thing you did and this is where I think I really bonded with you.
Speaker 2:Going back, though, I think, when I first learned about you through social media. You have a very good social media presence, thank you, right, and I didn't know who you were and somehow you were popping up my Facebook man and that's the stories. You were in a Lamborghini and you were in the same space as I was right. And then I hear about people talking about you and then I don't know if someone else that follow your stories I started seeing it in my feed. I think that's very people don't talk about that enough. The power of the social media and branding, especially when you have a good personality and things. Can you talk a little bit about how that's helped out your career?
Speaker 1:Yeah, tremendously Branding myself. Always like become the brand right. So branding myself as I always try to record content. So when I go to conferences I always try to flight my cameraman to take pictures to recap shoot content. Then I can later on use for marketing and I run not so much now but I used to run a lot of ads like retargeting ads. And I was just retargeting anybody that visited, like certain domains in our industry, you just keep seeing me and seeing me and seeing me, cause eventually, repetition increases brand awareness, right?
Speaker 1:So if I keep seeing me and I know the content that I'm putting is like good content, like I'm not making like this guru style videos, I'm telling you legit, like what it is so it starts creating like a real, like a real impact, right For real. And it has. There's not one single trade show that I in our industry that I go to and somebody doesn't come up to me like, hey, let me take a picture with you, or hey, I seen one of your videos, or thank you so much, or the random like messages. I watched this video on the screenshot of how much I made Like thank you so much for, and then I tell him oh, go, go, you know, check this person out and go learn over here, try to do it right. And you know, it definitely helps out a lot and social media definitely helps out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what you're making. As you said that you had a big impact on me. When I think about it. I knew nothing about paper call, bro. You know what? Anthony Paluzzi he used to have a paper call group. I would see him and I was like what the fuck's paper calls? I started off with selling like, solar leads right, it's real time leads. Real time web forms, age data that transfers right. I knew nothing about inbound calls, but you kept talking about it. I went to one. We'll talk about this a bit. You had a big mastermind about a year ago, a little bit over a year ago. Right, that was phenomenal. And people are talking about paper call and now I make money on paper call. I make good money on paper call, right, you know it's crazy, but like you were one of those influential figures, I never I never thanked you for that man.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate that, bro, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:I guess you know sometimes you don't go back and think about what were the little things that helped out, man, so I appreciate that, and I'm sure you've done that for tons of people. So, with that being said, man, I think that people gotta focus on you. Know, especially if you like it, you gotta get out there. Get out there, put your name out there, put your face up there, put stories up there. I get a lot of business off my Instagram feeds, man. People are like Dave, you're in town, we get a dinner going. Boom, some shit happens, right. So I think that's huge man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. So. People, I think a lot of people in our industry don't want to put theirself out there, like you know, they're kind of shy or they don't want to share what they know. I don't know why. Right, I love sharing what I was expecting anything back? I think it makes you better? Yeah, for sure. And whoever you help. So I always give this analogy of like you like basketball, yep, all right. So, like you know, I don't know the greatest player, michael Jordan, right. So if Michael Jordan didn't teach his teammates how to be better, he wouldn't be who he is right now. Right, so I look at it the same way, right. Whenever I teach you something that I think is cutting edge, it's only improving me, because now you know it, so now I can't really use it, so I've got to come up with something else. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You've got to keep elevating Correct. And I'll tell you what, too, about that man is that when you put up that good shit out there, you get it back and without expecting anything in return, because it's like I've taught so many people shit and I didn't make any money. I connected with somebody, I didn't make money, but they come back because they remember like you brought, I brought them value. So they come back to bring me value, or they want me to be a part of it, because they know I have some sort of expertise right, and I've done that for other people. Like, bro, you fucking hooked me up, I got to return the favor. It's that law of reciprocity. Reciprocity, right, is what the fucking law is, but it's a real fucking thing. It is Karma, karma. And then, bro, you did so. Let's talk about this. This was the best event. When did you do the Massimo 2022? Yeah, we did it in 2022.
Speaker 1:November. Yeah, it was November, november 2022,. We did it in Miami Beach. It was epic.
Speaker 2:That was the event of the. I go to a lot of fucking events I travel like, especially 2022. That was a big year for me. That was the event of the fucking year, bro, you liked it.
Speaker 1:It was sick man, you know why it was so good.
Speaker 2:You had. It was intimate. You had a lot of heavy hitters there. They were speaking, they were sharing. You can really take the blueprint. You get to be with people in an environment where, like you, let loose and that's when the bonding happens. Man, so that was a sick event, man. So let's talk about that stuff, Like what led to you creating that, and let's talk about the importance of these events and stuff like that. Masterminds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the masterminds. I love them. First of all, you get to meet people. This is a real person.
Speaker 2:I'm just a Skype user name right.
Speaker 1:So you get to meet people, you get to bond with them and the way that we structure it is done like you know, it's done that way on purpose, like when we do the bonding, like you mentioned, like the first day we kind of go light and it's more like get to know everybody and then we'll go and have a bonding experience, because the second day you're like best friends. So we got a nice place in Miami Beach and we brought everything down there. I think like a lot of the heavy, like you mentioned, a lot of the heavy hitters in the game were there openly sharing what they were working on opportunities to buy, sell calls and leads.
Speaker 1:And then we took a commercial yacht and fit it. I think it was 70 of us 70 people there, for you know open bars so it was definitely a fun time.
Speaker 2:Oh man, it was a lot of fun. That was a night man, that was a night. But that's also going back to what we were talking about the trade shows.
Speaker 2:There was a handful of us that were out, including me, to like we shut the places down, shut down the yacht, shut down this place, that place. We went to like five morning, whatever the fuck it was, and then we're back at the mastermind. You know whenever it started nine or eight, I don't even know when the hell it started. But I really believe in that. You gotta like, you gotta maximize that time. When's the next time you're gonna be with this person? It might be a year. You might never see that person again. So that's my mentality, when I know you're like that too, because we've done that and we've done that around the world man, you and me, man, vegas, this place, internationally. So I think that's where people lose sight of. When you're there. You maximize the time with that person because time is limited and the more successful you become, the more you value that time, right, you agree?
Speaker 1:with that. Yes, that time is just. You know it's our most valuable resource, so it is limited and you have to go with the mentality that the moment that you stepped on that plane to whatever it is that you're going until you come back, you have to be at 100%. Yeah, like, forget about sleep. You sleep when you get home, right, forget about eating you eat when you get home.
Speaker 2:You have to be on it.
Speaker 1:And if it includes, like you know, like waking up super early even though you just went to sleep like two hours ago, you have to do it. Three dinners, you know like, hey, dinner to this people to the other person. So you have to go full on mode and you definitely have to, you know, make the best out of it. Everybody's there to get business done and have a good time.
Speaker 2:Right Birds of a feather flock together right and people like to do business with people that they like.
Speaker 2:As long as you're not a scumbag and you honor your word right. So that's helped me a lot. I'm very outgoing. We're very similar in that way. We're outgoing, we're out and they see that and they like that. They want to make money with people that they like. So I think that's so fucking underrated. I feel like we should do another show, just the whole show, dedicated to our stories, with that shit Cause I've made we're going to talk about that. I've made so much money at these trade shows, right, this show, we just had it right now. Fuck, it's just you walk around, it just comes to you. Yeah, In the beginning you have to go, after you have to hunt, but then you just walk around, boom, boom, boom. It's like too much action, though. And then you got to worry about the shiny object, shit man, but it's fucking crazy. But I definitely we should do another episode. We just talk about those fucking stories. That's really what the money's made.
Speaker 1:The trade show stories. Trade show stories, that'll be the next one.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. Obviously, internet marketers we're always looking for the next thing right, and we're always testing the next thing. One thing I think people will talk about enough is the Hispanic market. Yeah, right, and I know you do a lot of Hispanic lead gen. I do some of it. You know I do a huge amount of it, but every time I've touched the campaign in Spanish it's worked across. Something like a solar, in particular, is zip code denominated, so it's hard to scale something like that, but the conversion rates are high so it's cheaper to get the media as well. Can you talk about that and impact the Spanish market? What you're going to be doing with that in the future?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's less competition when it comes to Spanish is also less distribution as well, correct. So you have to. You know it's only so much. You can scale it. But because there's less competition, you have better ROI, right. So we love everything Spanish. That's the first question that I ask. All of our buyers is like do you have Spanish agents?
Speaker 2:I do the same thing. Yeah, do you have a?
Speaker 1:Spanish team that you know I can push the Spanish traffic because it converts really well. Yeah, so we were actively, you know, buying media for insurance like Obamacare, medicare, credit card, debt and Spanish, because it works amazingly. Yeah, right, and then we just open an insurance agency ourselves and all of our teams are bilingual and we're concentrating only in Spanish at the moment. Yeah, and it's working, like you said, and it's working great and you have like the big, like referral factor also, that's huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no one talks about that Right, big, big.
Speaker 1:You have a big, so you help somebody out, you, you know, enroll them in the policy and then like, can I give you know so and so your number, so you can also get them in there, and it becomes like a chain reaction. Yeah, and I see that with the Spanish community in general. So it's great. They, you know, they call in the same thing. Right, they call in for credit card debt and they'll be like, well, I owe so much, do I qualify? And we're like, yeah, you do, but hold on one second. My husband or my wife is here. He also owes this month. Let's add it up. And what about if I refer you my friend that is also going through this? So it becomes like a snowball effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge. No, I didn't think about that. So anyone who's in this game yeah, someone leads to the avatars. That should be something you talk about, because they don't. They're not going to report. The lot of them are going to report the second or third sale. They get the referral sales, but they're you're 100% right about that, the Spanish. They like to refer. Things are good and things are bad. They'll fucking. That's it, you're done right.
Speaker 1:So make sure you got a good fucking yeah.
Speaker 2:not you're done, but yeah that's huge, and I'm looking forward to learning more about what you do with that, because we're also looking to explode in that particular.
Speaker 1:We're heavily doing.
Speaker 2:I don't care sharing yeah, whatever, but yeah.
Speaker 1:So ACA, obamacare in Spanish, medicare Spanish, credit card debt, spanish credit repair Spanish and internet and TV services in Spanish we're also doing it English, but in Spanish the ROI is much higher.
Speaker 1:I started just me right, and I'm a person that has always been very resourceful. I mean, I came to this country with 50 cents in my pocket, right? I was a kid and I asked my when I was leaving Cuba. I asked my dad like hey, like give me some money, because in the movies you know there's a person that help you with your luggage and you have to tip them. So, like, give me money and give me two quarters. So you know, with that being said, I just say it because I'm very resourceful. It came from nothing, absolutely nothing. Right Communist countries to come here and you know, see all the opportunities which people take for granted, absolutely.
Speaker 1:See all the opportunities, I'm like, wow, never in my life I would have had this life, right, yeah? So I always bust in my ass and always work hard and then, in the case of paper call, I start running all these campaigns and it was too much because I was creating like different landing pages and stuff and I need to help and I didn't want to hire anybody. I didn't want to hire anybody because my friend Phil Smith, I don't know if you know, phil, yeah, I don't feel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great guy, great guy, right he's a one man company has made the Inc 5000 like four times in the world. That's incredible, by the way, the only one person, company that has made like Inc 5000.
Speaker 2:I didn't know he was a one person. That's. That's fucking crazy dude. Wow Four or five years in the row.
Speaker 1:Wow, as a one person company. So it's like you know what. I'm just gonna follow, phil. It's just me fuck it and that's it.
Speaker 2:At least not for my business. Yeah, because I went to different business. Yeah, correct. Yeah, it works there. It works for him.
Speaker 1:But so I was, like you know, I reached out to Clayton and I was like hey man, like I got this idea, what do you think about it? And he goes like let's fucking go.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:I'm like awesome, bro, let's do it. And then there was me and him, and then it became too much work and he goes All right, bro, I know you don't want to go this corporate route, but we've got to start hiring, accounting and we had hiring like business and this, and that I'm like oh shit. And we started bringing in, little by little, people to the team and training them and not exactly, what is it that we need them to do and, like you know, promoting them and stuff. And right now we have an amazing team. I think it's 17 of us, yeah, all over the world. Most of us are here in the US. We've got a couple people in South America and a couple people in India and Pakistan and the Philippines, yep, and they all have their different roles, because what most people don't know is that unique it's four companies within unique right. So you have the network, you have the agency and then you have the software.
Speaker 2:I know that I didn't think about it.
Speaker 1:We own unique 360, which is like only one marketing tool, has like 25 different tools. You can build websites, automations, sms, all that stuff, and we have call dynamics, which is a quality assurance software.
Speaker 2:I thought to test that one.
Speaker 1:I call some yeah, awesome. So that is the software side. And then you have the network part, so everybody is in the same team, but they are assigned to technically different companies. And that's what's helping us grow, because I saw that. You know, the network is fine, media buying and being an affiliate is fine, it's totally fine. You can make a hell of a good living, but you're not building assets, you're not building residual income, right? So the moment that is, the music stops you mean when you kill exactly.
Speaker 1:So very early on, you know, we decided to start building software on a usage model, yeah Right, which either have a monthly recurrent revenue or a usage revenue, and we have been dedicated into that. And then, you know, we started put out unique 360, which is a huge success. We recently just put out call dynamics which, by the way, it's freaking insane it tells you in real time like your CPA, your sales we'll get into that later.
Speaker 1:The network and stuff like that, and also the insurance company that we own. So everybody's working together by specialized and you know, I think my team is, you know, one of the best out there by far when it comes to efficiency and you know, and the culture that we built right, which is, you know, we need to be professionals but have fun at what we're doing. Like you know, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're not going to do it. Well, right? So it's something that we always, like you know, push forward as a culture transparency, like you know, what is it, what is it that you're facing and how can we help. And we have very minimal meetings, like most people don't know that Right.
Speaker 1:So we have one meeting a week, which is like the whole staff all hands, and then we have department meetings, like throughout the weeks, but these are meetings between two, three people. There's not like company wide meetings. So we narrow it down to a way that we don't have to spend a lot of times in meetings. And you know, because I think their point is, like you know, being stuck in a Zoom meeting, like.
Speaker 2:I feel like I go nuts when I'm in times of trouble. I kill people, man.
Speaker 1:It's crazy they feel like you know, like I don't have an hour to like talk to you.
Speaker 2:Like what's going on? We're creative people, right, and we make money. Yeah, correct. We help you out there and make this shit happen, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we narrow it down to our process just by asking three simple questions, right? So we ask all of our team members, including myself, this three simple question. The first one what do you accomplish last week? Because if you don't tell me, chances are I won't know. Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't tell somebody else, they will not know. I will not know that you spend two days rebuilding the whole back end of something. Right, I know you're working, but I'm not really over you or looking, right?
Speaker 1:So first one is what do you accomplish last week? No bragging, just tell us so we know. Two, what are the blockers and questions that you're having right now? And three, what's your priorities for this week? And with those three simple questions we get it done. We can see what they did, what can we do to alleviate any blockers and what is it that they're doing this week, what are the priorities? So we can either adjust them, if they need it to be adjusted, and be like, look, this is not a priority, or, look, this priority. You should be working with this person, because it would be a better synergy to get it done faster and whatever, and that way we avoid having all those pointless meetings. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love it, but that was a lot. I hope everyone listens to that and plays that shit twice because, starting off with the story of having come into America, 50 cents right, and that's what America is a land of opportunity.
Speaker 2:That's what makes it so great. Despite all this shit that goes on, you watch on the news. At the end of the day, you stay focused. You can make a lot of money, change your life, change the course of your kid's life, your family, your legacy, right, that's what it comes out to. I know that was great and it's becoming. Listen. Whether people like or not, it's going to be more immigrants coming here, right, and I think at the end of the backbone of the country you know my mom came here. You came here like it is what it is right. So the bottom line is that that's a great, inspirational story, right, and that someone has a nine to five. I mean they can start a site also start, you know, learning from guys like you. Bust their ass, put their heads down, and when you talk about brailing the team, that's huge. I love that. The whole the no meetings or minimal meetings I'm a big believer in that as well. I probably have too many meetings, but I'm going to try to adopt some of the philosophy as well.
Speaker 1:We also use a tool, like you know, I'll share with you. It's called meat geek or geek meat.
Speaker 2:I think I heard that Meat, meat geek, yeah, and we use that tool.
Speaker 1:So we have this. That tool is connected to our calendar, right, and it's connected to our Slack, and so we have a channel that is called meetings and it's pretty much. You just go in there and you can see transcriptions of everything that happens. It's like an open book policy. So if I want to see what the meeting was between I don't know, joanne and Rose, right, and they were talking about coal routing and all that I was not in the meeting, it was only them two, but the transcript is available. So any team member that has any questions can see the transcript.
Speaker 1:And you can also tag Like you know, like say, oh, you know, like I'm having a meeting with a buyer and the buyer telling me you know, I'll make sure that I send you creatives, I'll make sure that I'll send you the landing pages and I'll also make sure that I'll send you a report over CPA with the other buyers for the last 30 days, right. And then when the meeting is done, I go and Slack, attack the right person that should be sending them Like hey, look at the notes of the promises that I made. Can you make sure that that gets done? And it's full, like we're on the same page. Yeah, it's cohesive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think a lot more people should start doing that, it's collapse timeframes.
Speaker 2:Right. Helps you collapse timeframes. Keep things simple. I love it. Okay, Before we wrap up, we talked about trade shows in the beginning, right.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We talked a lot about it, but what are? What are three tips? You're a newbie going to a trade show, right?
Speaker 2:I remember our first Leeds Con was fucking I don't know 2016, 2017, and I met somebody that's changed my course of my career there, right, but a lot of times people get nervous if they don't know nobody or whatever. We give like two or three tips to someone first trade show, or maybe you already give two, three, three tips for a newbie and someone that's already experienced like that maybe can help them move the needle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so have some type of business or digital cart right, cause you're going to exchange information and you're going to do it fast.
Speaker 1:You know, you can use whatever digital QR codes. That will be like the first thing, to make sure that you information is ready to go for whenever the exchange comes. And the other thing is, like, don't be afraid to shake hand and ask people their name and what is it that they do? Yup, all right. One thing for sure is that entrepreneurs and successful people love talking about themselves 100% Right. So if you ask him what is it that they do? And also, if you can, they're asking him like you know their hobbies or anything like that, so you can then tie it together right, will help you out a lot.
Speaker 1:Then you have to start working on your memory skills and make sure that you remember names. It's very important. There's nothing more unprofessional than not remembering somebody's name you had a conversation with. Absolutely Make sure you know. I always be like, let's take a picture, and then you know, I'll take a picture, you know what's your phone number, send it to them, boom, boom. And then that way, I know, right, but I forget to save the name, and they text me and I'm like oh, I know so and so. So make sure you do that. And then also just try to be yourself. Yup, right, because the authentic. You is always going to be consistent.
Speaker 2:Yup.
Speaker 1:So just be yourself, Go out there, shake hands. Let me say shake hands and kiss babies right Be a politician.
Speaker 1:That's what it is. Yup, and just make sure that you have your value proposition, like you know, packed down right. So when they ask, why should we do business together? And you can be like, look, because of this, this, this right, because I'm generating X amount of calls in this vertical and they are performing really well and I think they will do the same for you, right. So make sure that you know you're a straight shooter. So those are just a few tips. I'm sure you have tons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love it and maybe think of things that you know that you've been doing a long time. I've been doing a long time. It's good to hear different perspectives on it and I can implement one of those things. You can move the needle, have my team implement one of those things. So I love that. Man, and I can't emphasize enough Everyone here, fucking go to trade shows. If you haven't been in a trade show, find one, go to one. You know, if you go to a few a year, go to more.
Speaker 1:They fucking move the needle and staying the same hotel.
Speaker 2:you know that the conference is having that's a big tip right there, huge tip.
Speaker 1:Make sure you stay in the same one, because it's going to cut down the travel time and it's also going to expose you to more opportunities in the lobbies and bars and areas that people hang out.
Speaker 2:That's very that's a good one, because a lot of times it'll be more expensive to stay there. I don't know how much more two, three hundred dollars a night, but, like I said, you spend extra 600 or 1000 bucks. It gets you that proximity is power, the closer you can be to the movers and shakers, right, instead of having to go get an Uber somewhere else and miss out. You have limited time there. You want to maximize each and every fucking second right.
Speaker 1:And depending on your budget. Everybody has different budget, but depending on the budget, I would recommend getting a suite or upgraded room, not just, I mean, obviously it's a lot better for yourself, but also to have a space to have private meetings, cause you can meet somebody in the lobby and maybe you're talking to a big buyer. I'm like hey, do you mind coming up to the suite?
Speaker 1:Maybe you can grab a drink and and we can finish the conversation and definitely you don't want to bring them into a regular room that you know. It's just a bed there. It feels kind of awkward, but if you bring them into a nice suite that you can sit down and and you know, it's a lot better. So we tried to do that as well. We tried to upgrade our room just so we have a space that we can talk privately. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bro, a lot of you gave a lot of fucking gems. You dropped a lot of gems here, so I hope everyone listen.
Speaker 1:I will listen to this shit twice. I'll listen to this fucking. Let's fucking go. That's fucking good babe, no man call us Corona.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thanks, yo, when can, where can people find you?
Speaker 1:You can go to the 305 shark and online just search Carlos Corona paper call. I guess you'll find me Good shit, follow him.
Speaker 2:You want to make more money? Follow this fucking guy. He knows his shit.
Speaker 1:Thank you, appreciate it, appreciate you. Hit me here, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 2:Soundupbeat audio.