From Fiverr to Digital Marketing Success | Podcast interview with Victor Dedaj

Hey man, it's really, really good to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Oh, it's great to have you on. So, uh, Hernan, I'd like to get started by asking you to please share your story. How did you wind up becoming an entrepreneur?

Yeah, that's actually a, a good question. And, uh, I think my last day job was, uh, gee, 13, 14 years ago now. And the math that I did was pretty simple, right? I just finished, uh, I just finished university. I got a degree in public relations. I was working, uh, you know, and what you could say was my dream job, right? I was working for a big company. It was actually at a walking distance from my house. I was living with my parents back in the day, so I used to walk like 3 blocks and boom, I was there, the office, right?

Mm-hmm.

It was, it was, it was insane. It was really good. But the, the, the math that I did was the following. I'm like, all right, So if I stay 10 years here and, you know, make a career here and, you know, become a— maybe I could become a middle management, maybe a manager, you know, senior executive, something like that. What could happen if I dedicate those exact same 10 years with the exact same amount of intensity to something that I own, right? And the reality is that, you know, I never looked back since because, you know, the math just worked out. I'm like, Okay, I know that I want to become an entrepreneur. It's going to be really, really tough to become one having a day job. And, you know, that's, that's when I jumped and I never looked back since. And I jumped without a network, you know, the only network or without a net rather. And the only net that I had was, you know, living with my parents. But then I moved alone with my girlfriend back in the day and she had a day job and I didn't. And one of the things that that feed us for quite a while, actually for the first couple years was fiverr.com. You know, it actually helped us put money. It actually helped me put money on the table and pay the rent. And sometimes we had to you know choose between putting food on the table or paying the rent or heating up the house. And I I'm originally from Argentina. We were living in Patagonia, so it got really really cold. But the reality is that you know at that point when I when I decided to to become an entrepreneur, I didn't know. What I was going to do. I just knew that it was something to do with technology, computers, you know, I was a big technology fan, but then I saw all of my mates, my friends, you know, getting promoted in their jobs and making more money than I was making, a lot more money actually, because they had a day job and they had a paycheck coming in every single month. I was like, should I go back to, you know, get a day job? Should I go back to you know, becoming an employee, and then I saw them, you know, getting better houses and changing their cars and all that, and I was kind of stuck, and I was stuck for the first couple of years, and then I came across Fiverr.com, and, you know, that's how I was able to kind of leave my day job, jumped, and then, you know, start making some money online. I remember the first time somebody gave me money over the internet was on Fiverr.com. A complete stranger gave me money, to write articles and that kind of made me a believer. That was a big shift in mentality that I had. So that's how I became an entrepreneur, you could say.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing your story. So basically it goes back 13 years, you'd finished college, you went into public relations, you got what many people consider a dream job working for a big company and then you, you know, you did an analysis, you said 10 years from now if I stay here, what would happen? I'll probably be an executive or a middle manager, And then you said, if I was— I had my own business, could I make more money? And you, you determined that having your own business, you could. So you decided you want to be an entrepreneur, but it wasn't easy at first, as is often the case with many entrepreneurs. And sometimes entrepreneurs, you realize it would be a challenge in the beginning, but some entrepreneurs, they think when they get started, oh, the money's gonna start flowing in. And most of the time, that just is not the case. Many of us entrepreneurs have found out. We're like saying, Hey, where's the money? But, um, yeah, and then, you know, you know, at the time you were living with your parents, you didn't really have any networks, you didn't have much money. And then, um, you and your girlfriend got a place. She was working in the beginning, and then you started working at FireRed, which started paying the bills.

Mm-hmm.

And you— and but for a time it was hard because you saw your friends, they were making pretty good money, they're getting cars and new homes, and you're wondering Did I make a mistake? And I can say as an entrepreneur, that's gone through my mind sometimes. And I know for many entrepreneurs in the beginning, they're wondering, did I make the right decision? And, um, for some of them, they decide to go back. They— and it's— and, and I wonder if some of those, some of those people like Napoleon Hill writes in Think and Grow Rich, what did they give up? 3 feet from the goal. Whereas if they had just continued and persevered, maybe they would have had that success that you later on had. But sometimes it seems they can't see, they can't see the end line. They say, you know, it's not worth it, and they go back to the, to the old job. But whereas if they continued, they might have had that success that many other people would have had. And you brought up the interesting point, uh, you got a first internet payment for someone on Fiverr.com for writing an article. And, and that's huge for a lot of people because it becomes real for people when you get that first payment. And that's what happened to you. When you get that first fee, you set yourself You know, this thing can work. I got paid for doing some work online. You know, that means I could probably get other payments. And that's really crucial in any kind of, uh, online business. It's that first payment or 2 because it becomes really real. Because a lot of times, so you get that payment, you do have doubts as to whether it can work or not. And, uh, I'm sure you've, you've dealt with so many other people over the last 13 years. I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of people who had doubts and probably saying you know, should I give up? And you've probably helped counsel saying, no, you should really continue, give it a little more time, and you're going to get those payments. Is that the case?

Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. At scale-driven.com, which is my, my current company, you know, out of fiverr.com, I went to work with, uh, you know, with a lot of my heroes, right? Uh, with Frank Kern and Grant Cardone and many others. And, uh, and, and today, right now, at scale-driven.com, we, we have the agency, which is the done-for-you side of things where we run ads for clients and we build funnels and all that fun stuff. But we also have the coaching side of things where we teach people how to do it for themselves and for other people. And, uh, that comes up a lot actually. You know, I, I talk to a lot of, um, starting and up-and-coming agency owners that they're stuck. You know, they're stuck because they, they doubt themselves. And the reality is that, you know, self-confidence to move forward and self-confidence to wake up every single day and do things for Really long time because that's the that's the key to success, right? There are no most overnight overnight success stories. They only took ten years, you know, so ten or fifteen years. So you need to be doing things every single day for a long period of time, and many many of those things are uncomfortable. So how do you get you know how do you how do you actually enjoy the process or how do you actually get confidence that you know results are going to come are for small wins and and from from a small win you can get a lot of confidence and then you stack those small small wins. So for instance, that first payment. Made me a believer, right? And then I started working with this, with this, with these people, right? Writing articles for $5 a pop, $4 a pop, because, you know, Fiverr will take a dollar out of the top. So, you know, we— I started doing this, and then people started reaching out to me and say, hey, can you do some other work for us, right? Can you do, um, can you work with, uh, with, with, with our web design? Can you do SEO? Can you do, you know, some other stuff? And I would say Yes, of course I can. And then I will figure it out later, right? Which is what many entrepreneurs do. And the reality is, when you see these big companies, big names, they've been around for longer, they've been failing a lot more, and thus they've been having more successes because failure is just the way that you get success. And there's no way around it. And they don't have stuff figured out. I've been able to work hand in hand with some of the brightest minds in digital marketing, you know, in this century and they don't have things figured out. They just try more things, right? They just try more things. They just do more. They just act more. They just implement more and faster. And that gives them data, that gives them feedback right away. So whenever you see these people, oh, where they seem to have everything figured out and they seem to be so confident and whatnot, the reality is that none of us have anything figured out, right? Like we're testing, we're trying, and we're out there in the marketplace making offers, launching campaigns, doing all of this stuff. Um, and, uh, and that allows us to get feedback fast enough so that we know what works, what doesn't work, and what we work with scale, what doesn't work, we learn from it, we can it, we try something else. So that's how, that's how you move forward, you know. That's what, what I think brings confidence for, for you to wake up and move forward every single day.

So no, I totally agree. That's some really good stuff you just shared. Um, you know, because you work with a bunch of people, great people like Frank Kern and Grant Cardone and others. And, and you mentioned self-confidence. Belief in yourself is huge. A lot of times it's not just knowing what to do, it's having that belief you can do it. Because if you lack that confidence, you're not going to take those necessary actions that will lead you to success. And you mentioned you gotta, you gotta do a lot of uncomfortable things every single day to, you know, you have to get out of your comfort zone, which is not easy for most people because your brain is wired to keep you comfortable. So doing new things, it's not easy for most people. But the thing is, when you try new things, after a while You know what, usually do get comfortable doing it. It's just that the— in the beginning it's not comfortable. But a lot of people, they don't want to try new things because they're afraid. They may stay at a job that they can't stand because they may not like it, but they know what to expect. Or they may be in a relationship they're not happy with. They're dating someone, they're unhappy, but they're afraid of being alone, or they're afraid they may never meet someone else, so they stay there. Whereas if— but they're miserable. Whereas if they do leave it, they may find a better job, they may find a better person to date. But it happens all the time. And I like you mentioned small little things, small victories. Celebrate those small wins because the small wins, your subconscious mind starts believing, hey, this could work. And the small wins, you celebrate each little small win, they eventually become bigger and bigger wins. And that's what happens to every entrepreneur. It's like when you get that, you know, that first sale, that first customer, those leads, celebrate. A lot of times we say to ourselves, okay, I got paid $20, no big deal. Celebrate it. Because $20 becomes $40, it becomes $100, because $1,000, eventually $100,000, millions. So celebrate those little victories because those little victories would become, uh, big victories. And, uh, one thing I also recommend is keep a record of your little victories, you know, your little successes, because when you go through it, sometimes, you know, all entrepreneurs, even you're going through a good stretch of, you know, business, sometimes you'll have a downturn and you might be struggling for a couple months. Then you go back to your victory log and you say, wow, 6 months ago I was doing all this stuff. I know I can get through this. So it's really good stuff. And like you said, then people are asking you later on, can you do this? Can you do web design? Can you do SEO? You say, yeah, I can. I mean, you really didn't do it. You didn't know it at the time, but you would figure it out and you figured it out. And that's what a lot of companies do. That's what a lot of entrepreneurs do. They, you know, you fail a lot. And that's a very important point because You're not gonna find many entrepreneurs who, when they got started, oh, I figured it all out, I had tons of success. They had a lot of frustration, stress. They did a lot of fail, but they learned from it. Like you said, they got feedback, they made corrections. So, and fail, one acronym for fail I like is First Attempt at Learning. You're learning from, you know, your experience and you make those corrections, you get that feedback. Feedback's very important. It tells you what to do better. The thing is, if you never take the action, Nothing's going to change. So you have to start taking that, get the feedback, things get better. When a plane is going from, say, New York City to Los Angeles, it is off course most of the time, but it makes corrections throughout the flight, and eventually it will land at that airport in Los Angeles. And you got to figure out what your goal is, where you want to go, and you're going to be off course some of the time, but you're going to make adjustments, corrections, and then you'll figure it out. Like, which is what's happened from you. And because of that, you didn't give up. You got feedback, you figured out how you could do things better, and eventually led to a lot of great success. And I, I'd like to, to talk, ask you a little bit more about the mindset, the personality— uh, not mindset, I mean personal development and the subconscious mind and how important that is for it. Obviously knowing what to do is very important, but I don't think enough people realize the importance of having the proper mindset and working on subconscious mind, which makes 95% of your decisions.

Yeah, so I think that it comes down to, to a couple things. Like, for instance, on my, on my case, you know, I grew up in a middle-class family. Uh, my dad was, uh, you know, actually both my mom and my dad did— they're both accountants, but my mom always had a day job and my, my dad always has his— had his own thing, right? His own, um, practice, you would say. And then, uh, and, and, and I, I was lucky enough that they were during their early, you know, while they were starting during their 20s and their early 30s, they joined a couple of multi-level marketing companies, right? And I know that they don't have the best publicity. They're like, well, it's a pyramid scheme, a lot of this. But here's some of the things that I learned, and here's some of the things that I learned by being exposed to direct marketing. And the reality is that multi-level marketing companies or pyramid schemes or whatever, they don't have the best press, but they do have a lot of great mindset and sales training. So I remember that I was, I was really little, I was like, I don't know, 7, 8, 10 years old. And I remember that my parents, they would have all of these books, right? They would have all of these books like Think and Grow Rich, they would have like Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, they have all of these, you know, emotional intelligence. So they would have all of these books in the bookshelf, right? And, and I would like, I will be bored. And I would do 2 things. I would play computer games, right? Because my dad was, was a big fan of technology. So I would play some computer games and then I would also read these books. That's all I did. Like I went to school, I went, I come back and then I read these books. And I remember that they did, they had a big impact, right, on me because they were there, they were available. And, um, and, and, and, and they still, you know, watch the news and they still, you know, fight a lot about money and whatnot. But something that I, that I realized is that You need to learn how to hypnotize yourself. You need to learn how to, you know, get that good feedback in because inputs equals outputs. You know, if you input trash, if you're watching the news, if you're, if you're, if you're talking, you know, if you're gossiping with your friends or your family all day, and if you're having that negative self-talk, that could be really, really, really harmful, right? And that's trash input, which equals trash output. Right? So one of the things that we do when it comes to scale-driven, we teach mostly marketing and advertising right now, but it all comes down to the mindset initially. It all comes down to how do you actually become a good entrepreneur, a good business owner, a good leader? And then, you know, sometimes I act a little bit of like a shrink in our coaching calls. And the reality is that the reality is that I see a lot of people that they are, you know, getting that input from the wrong sources. So if you really want to have good output, you need to change your input. This is like eating McDonald's every single day. You're not going to have great health. Well, you need to make sure that you are inputting good vitamins and minerals and nutritious information into your brain. And I call that hypnotizing yourself. You need to hypnotize yourself to success, which basically means read the right type of books, stop watching the news, stop having those pitiful conversations, though, stop gossiping, you know, skip the drama and start having conversations like this, like the one that we're having right now, right? Get exposed to podcasts, get exposed to people that can lift you up because that will slowly but surely will impact how do you think about yourself, how you think about life, and how you think about, you know, everything. Another thing that I always mention is mentoring. Like mentors can make or break your mindset, like literally, right? So getting the right type of mentor, it's, it's, it's so important. I was, I was, you know, lucky enough to have these, these type of guys as mentors. And I, I, and, and, and I will take a look at everything that they do, right? And the type of conversations that they have with people, you know, I would say 98% of the time are positive. You know, they're, they're focusing on their stuff and they're positive conversations and they are inputting stuff that will help them reach their goals faster, which is not what 99.9% of people do, right? And so I think that, again, that plays a big role. whatever you input in terms of content, material, conversations, and also the teachings that you get from other people, I think that will lead to a greater, better, and, you know, a more, more conducive to success output, if that makes sense.

It totally makes sense. And thanks for sharing your story about your parents. So you, you mentioned they got involved in a couple of network marketing or multi-level marketing companies. And one thing those type of companies do do is they do focus a lot on your mindset and personal development. And I know from people in the industry, they'll tell you, They'll often describe network marketing as personal development with a compensation plan because they really do focus on it, because they know you really need to have a good mindset to succeed in an industry. And I think it's helpful in pretty much any other industry. And you mentioned, you know, your dad had books that— like Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People. And you realize those things made a big impression on you and for your future. And you talk a lot about whatever you input, that's the output you're going to get. If you have garbage in, it's going to be garbage out. You have good stuff in, it's going to be good stuff out. So you got to see You got to be careful what you're feeding your mind. It's like a computer. The computer is going to accept whatever you input it. So if you're going to put garbage in the computer, garbage is going to come out. And a lot of times we're feeding stuff like, like you mentioned, negative self-talk. It's very destructive stuff. And very often we're not even aware of that negative self-talk. So you got to be careful as to what you're saying to yourself throughout the day. And, um, you know, and you brought up the example McDonald's. You know, if you're eating a lot of junk food, a lot of garbage food every single day, you're not going to have good health. If you want better health, you need to change the kind of food you're eating. And the same thing applies applies to your mind. And you got to expose yourself to better stuff. Like you said, watch good podcasts, YouTube videos, read good books, surround yourself with positive, successful people, which is very important. And you mentioned it's extremely important to get a good mentor because a good mentor can really help change your mind, change your mind, change your life, show you the things that you're capable of doing. Just point out little things you can do. A lot of times you may not be able to see yourself, but a good mentor can tell you Do this instead. You might want to focus on this instead of that, and could save you a lot of time, headache, and frustration. Could save you many years of frustration by telling you the right things to do. So definitely some really good stuff. Now let's shift now to some of the things to your business. So what is some advice you would give to someone that wants to get better results with their social media ads? Because you know a lot of people, they may run ads in their. Yeah, they're not getting any results and they're wondering, am I wasting my money? How could they get good results with their social media ads?

That's a, that's a great question. And I, I, I get that question asked a lot because, you know, small business owners or starting entrepreneurs, they might not have a huge budget to advertise, right? So they want to make every dollar count. Like, that's what we do at ScaleDriven is we work with small business owners and medium-sized companies, and they don't have millions of dollars to advertise like these big brands on, on branding, and it's just, you know, throwing the money out the window. So we need to keep every dollar accountable. One of the things that we found after running millions of dollars in ads for any type of business and any kind of business, we helped like 350+ agency clients, we helped 10,000 entrepreneurs, you know, get better with their advertising. One of the things that we found is that the best thing that you could do for your business is make your ads as helpful as possible. Because there's several levels to that, right? Let's say that you, I don't know, you are thinking about starting a dog walking business, right? And you're thinking about doing that, and then the first thing that you could do is to start putting out really good content about dog walking, not because you want to teach people. Of course you want to give away the good stuff, right? But there's a couple of things. Number one is that people will feel more comfortable giving, you know, giving their dog to you because you seem to know what you're doing. Number one. Number two, there's the principle of reciprocity. There's a great book by Robert Cialdini called Influence. It's a fantastic book. It's a fantastic book. And it talks about, you know, basically what makes us human. And one of the principles is the principle of reciprocity, right? So when you're putting out good content, what happens is that this could be in the form of articles, it could be in the form of video. I recommend video, you know, but it can be in the form of a podcast. But the main point is that when you're putting out good content to your ideal niche and to your ideal demographic, you get reciprocity back. You get good stuff happening, right? And number 3 is that, as you probably know, is that organic reach on most platforms, right, on Facebook, Instagram, now it's happening to TikTok, organic reach is usually pretty low, right? If you have like, let's say, 1,000 followers or 1,000 likes, you don't— you never reach those 1,000 people with your content, you know? And now it's happening to TikTok because TikTok is lowering the organic reach to get paid reach up and running, right, and paid advertising up and running. So it's like the textbook way of how social media platforms work. They give you a lot of reach initially, they get hooked up on— they get you hooked up on the platform, and then they lower the reach so that you can pay for ads. It's fine, it's their business model, right? It's not right or wrong, but that's how it works. So if you advertise your good content, what's going to happen is that that good content is going to get the lion's share of the eyeballs that your business gets, right? So if, for instance, I remember when I was working with Dan Henry, which is a good friend of mine, he's a fantastic marketer and whatnot, And, uh, and we, we started running his ads. We took his Facebook ads from— I think he was spending like $10,000 or $15,000 a month up to $150,000 a month profitably, right? We took that, uh, to that level, 6 figures a month in profitable ad spend in 3 months. And one of the, one of the ads that made all the difference, which was my first quote-unquote million-dollar ad that I wrote for somebody, was a literal article. Like, I wrote an article 2,400-word article on Facebook. It was super helpful. It was about marketing. It was super helpful. It actually gave away good value, good content, right? Like as you would find on a blog, right? A blog post. And we run that as an ad to his audience. And that article, that post, that ad was the first— my first million-dollar ad that I wrote for someone. Somebody because it went on to make him $1 million, right? And then we kind of distilled the framework out of that. We kind of distilled the value. But I think one of the teachings there was like, and then we did it again with Frank Kern, but in this case we did it with video. So I think that if anything, if you have, let's say, I don't know, $100, $200, $500 to spend a month on advertising, it doesn't matter how much you want to put your best content and advertise that best content because you're going to get Engagement, you're gonna get likes, you're gonna get comments, but most importantly, you're gonna get people reaching out to you to do business with you. So that's like the basics, advertising 101 for somebody that's starting out or might have a low advertising budget. That's how you win, and that's how you start getting results.

Uh, definitely some really good stuff there, Hernan. Um, you know, you gotta make the ads as helpful as possible, give them a lot of value, a lot of good content, a lot of, you know, stuff that's helpful to Let them become familiar with you and you increase the know, like, and trust factor. Because a lot of times you're someone no one knows, they don't know if they want to give you their money. But you put a lot of good content, they'll say, well, this person knows what he's talking about and this person can really help my business out. And so you put into good articles, you put into good videos, and they become more familiar with you. You mentioned the Law of Reciprocity and you mentioned Robert Cialdini's book Influence. I think it's a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who's listening to it because a lot of times the more value that you give to people and with the way the law of reciprocity works is you give someone something, they feel obliged after a while to give something back to you because it, you know, and their marketing agents are great. Sometimes you'll get something in the mail, they give you a free gift, it's some sort of charity, they'll give you a free gift, they'll give you maybe free address labels, and you feel bound to send them something back in return. Or you go to a supermarket, they'll give you a free sample to try. You try it and then you say, you know what, I really should buy something. And they know you're gonna wind up buying something. So this happens all the time. So you give out a lot of good content, a lot of free value. Very often the people watching, some of them are gonna say, you know what, I'm getting a lot of free value. I really will subconsciously say to myself, I need to buy something. And that's the way it works. It's a very powerful content marketing. Which is why it's really great to give a lot of great free content at the beginning because it will lead to more customers. And unfortunately, a lot of marketing agencies do not know that. So the very successful ones like yours understand that, which is why they become so successful over the years. So definitely some really good stuff there, Hernan. Now, next question I'd like to ask you is like, now once you get that customer, you know, they've gotten— they've seen the ad, they say, you know what, okay, I want to work with this agency. How do you help increase that customer value?

Yeah, that's a great question. That's the next step, right? Like, I think that Jay Abraham has the 3 golden rules of scaling any business, which is increasing the ticket value or how much money people give you on the first transaction, right? That will be to increase the transaction number or the transaction price, which is number one. Number 2 is increase the frequency of transaction, meaning how frequent they give you money, right? And number 3, increase the speed of transactions, like how often, how often they give you money, how much they give you, and that type of stuff. And the more you pull these levers, the more you can scale your business. So, and then Dan Kennedy would say, a buyer is a buyer is a buyer is a buyer is a buyer. So when, you know, when people come to us, ScaleDriven, and they want us to work with their advertising, running their marketing and whatnot, what happens is that they might be too focused on just one product. It happens a lot with e-commerce stores. It happens a lot with people that might have, you know, a couple of information products out there. And we're like, okay, that's great. You're running advertising or maybe organically you're getting clients and you're getting buyers and whatnot. What else is there, right? What else is there? What else are you offering to them? What else are you selling to them? Do you have any type of subscription model? Do you have any backend high-ticket offers? Like we help our developed this strategy because, you know, most of entrepreneurs and me included, sometimes we think that the only way to grow our business is to get more customers, right? We need to get out there, get more customers, get more customers, get more customers. And that's just one way of growing a business. The second fastest and easiest way is to sell those people that say yes the first time more stuff, like sell them more stuff, give them more value, right? Give them more value. And there's a high chance that they will give you more money, right? So that's the second thing, and that's what we help implement at ScaleDriven. So there are several ways that you can do this, like implementing a subscription model. It's a, it's a good idea, you know, having people paying you every single month, what's called continuity model, having upsells on your funnels when people are coming in. That's number 2. Uh, number 3, having reactivation sequences. You know, if somebody only purchased from you once, you want to reach out to them, you want to see what happened, you want to see why we haven't done business with you over the past last 6 months, you know, how can we help you? Uh, having higher ticket offers, you know, for more involved approach. Like for instance, there's always 3 levels of value for an offer. There's the manual, which is, okay, here's how to do things, right? Like let's say here's how to walk your own dog, right? Here's how to walk your own dog. And you sell them the manual, you send them a course on dog walking and making sure that the dog gets what it needs. That's value number 1. The next level of value is we do it with you, right? We'll go out there, we'll coach you on how to walk your We'll coach you, we'll go with you, and we'll give you access to a coaching call so that you become a good dog walker. And number 3, which is the highest level of value, is we do it for you, right? Okay, we'll go out there, pick your dog, go walking, and then bring it back. That's the highest level of value. Most people, or most companies, are focusing on one of the 3 levels of value. They're either selling information on how to do it, they are doing it with a client, or they either doing it for the client, right? So there's a lot of additional stuff that you can offer to your original clients or to current customers by, you know, deploying services or products for these different levels of value. And that's what we help ScaleDriven to do. And that can allow you to scale your business without having to have more customers through the door.

That's some really good stuff. Thanks for sharing that. And a lot of people don't understand, and you just explained it. When you got a customer, They've already bought from you, so they're much more likely to buy from you than a stranger who doesn't know you. And I don't think enough people focus on it. As you mentioned, a lot of people focus only on getting more customers, which is fine, but you already have a customer. So you, you could try to upsell them, you could try to give them a subscription, you could reactivate someone. Someone only bought from you once or hasn't bought from you in a while, you want to reach out to say, hey, you know, how can we help you? Is there anything else we can, you know, kind of service can we provide for you? And some of those customers are, will reactivate with you. You got to reach out to them. You gotta, you know, there's a lot of good values, you know, a lot of good stuff that you can help with. A lot of times they're willing to buy more from you because they bought from you in the past and they trust you. And a lot of companies don't take advantage of it. So that's some really good stuff to increase the customer value because I, I know guys who've sold a $7 product, uh, to someone starting off, but then that eventually led to a $100 product $10,000, $30,000, all because they started with one product. But eventually they created a relationship. They started selling them more products. So you never know, because sometimes when a person's bought from you, a lot of times they will buy more from you. So that's some really good stuff. Next thing I'd like to ask you, Hernan, is, you know, when you're getting started and you want an agency to, you know, run ads for you, what are some of the things you look for when you're hiring a good marketing agency? What are the things that you look for? As an entrepreneur? Yeah, that's—

yeah, for sure. That's a great question because, you know, when we, when we, uh, when we talk to potential clients, um, agency clients, um, there's always this client that comes and they— many of them actually have been burned, uh, from agencies, right? From digital marketing agencies in the past. And when we start digging, of course there's, there's some really lousy agencies. There's some agencies that they promise you the world and they don't deliver and tell you, yeah, we're gonna make you $1 million in 7 days. Just, you know, allow us to work with you and they'll do anything they can to sell you on their services. And when something seems too good to be true, it usually is, right? So I rather like when I'm having conversations with potential clients and with prospects, I try to be as honest as humanly possible. It's like, this is gonna take work. You're gonna hate it at first, but then we're gonna get some traction and then we're gonna help you scale. But this is going to take work and time. Marketing is a marathon. It's never a sprint. We need to take off, we need to test offers, we need to test funnels, we need to tweak a lot of things to build you a machine. Now, people that understand that, they become far better clients. And you want to be a good client for an agency as much as you're looking for a good agency to run your ads or help you with marketing, right? And the way you do that is, number one, do not rush to go out there and get an agency working with you. You, right? And the reason I say this is because many, many people that come to us, when we talk to a client, they're like, well, I tried 5 agencies in the past and they didn't work. That could be a red flag for us because it's like, hey, you tried 5 agencies in the past and none of them work? Like, what's going on? Are you sure that's not your product or your business the problem? Like, what's going on? And you start digging and you realize that they are rushing the process of hiring an agency. So what I almost always recommend is number one, you want to become a good potential candidate for an agency to work with you, to set you up for success, and you do that by knowing your numbers. By knowing your numbers, meaning how much is a customer worth to you? How much is worth to your business over the first 30 days, over the first 60 days, 90 days? Number one, how much are you willing to spend to acquire a customer, right? And knowing your numbers makes things so much easier, right? Like just having those numbers on the table is like, okay, a worth to us X amount of money over 30 days. And if you're doing a good job, over 60 days it would be worth more, over 90 days it would be worth more. Uh, so you want to make sure that you have those numbers, at least those numbers figured out. There's some business owners that are much more sophisticated. They know their opt-in rates and they know how many calls they need to make before they, they land a client and all of those things, right? But just knowing your customer value helps a lot. And when it comes to hiring an agency, some of the things that we take a look at— because I've been on both ends, right? I've been a marketing director hiring agencies, but I'm also right now I own a digital marketing agency. So I've been on the hiring and on the offering side of things. And one of the things that we took a look at is an agency should have an overall vision of your business because a traffic agency, a paid advertising agency, you know, they will run ads, But ads and advertising and paid advertising on social media, it's only part of the equation. Sometimes it's just the tiny part, right? If you're running traffic to a brick wall, it doesn't matter how good your targeting is, it doesn't matter how good your ads are, you're running ads to a brick wall. So what we usually recommend is when hiring an agency, you want to talk to, uh, the person that's on the other side. You want them to have a vision of your entire business, meaning, all right, we're running traffic to this landing page or to this funnel or to this website. What happens after, right? How many emails are you sending? How much are you reaching out to these people? What type of conversations you're having? How effective are your salespeople on the phone? So having an overarching vision of the customer's business and funnels allows the agency to become much more effective. That will be number one. And number two, you want to ask what type of results they're getting for their current clients, not in terms of impressions, nor in terms of clicks, not even in terms of leads, but actual ROI. Like, how— what is the ROI or return on the investment that an average client will get with an agency? For us, it's around 3, 3.5x, you know, because we run ads on many different niches and in many different verticals. And while we cannot promise a 3.5x, 4x, 3.1x, uh, return on investment because we don't know most of the people that are coming our way and we have to have conversations with them. That's the typical result for one of our clients. Again, not a promise, but that's the typical result. And that's based on how much money you're putting on ads versus how much money you're taking out. Impressions, leads, clicks— those are great numbers. Those are mostly vanity metrics. If you're not making money with your advertising, campaigns, especially as a small business owner or medium-sized business, you should run the other way. So those are the 2 things that I would say is talk from the perspective of ROI, take a look at what they're doing in terms of the entire funnel, not only their ads, and if they can advise you, but also you want to become a good client, you want to know your numbers as much as possible before you bring someone in. And if you don't know your numbers, that's fine, but you need to know that the first couple of months by working with a digital marketing agency You're set out to discover those numbers, right? And that's fine. You're buying data, you're discovering those numbers, and usually you don't get any return on the investment during those first couple months because you're just spending money to get data, right? So having those things in mind will make you a much more effective entrepreneur when it comes to hiring a digital marketing agency.

No, no, no, that's some really great stuff you just shared there. It's, you know, a client comes up to you, potential client. Number one, you got to be honest and you got to say, hey, This is going to take some time, it's going to take some work. And, and I, like you mentioned, marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't expect to get a million dollars in results in 2 days. Unfortunately, that's what a lot of these, uh, agencies expect when they come to you. They, they want results immediately, and it takes time. So you need to, you know, learn your audience. Well, you got to get the numbers, you got to figure out, you know, you're going to make adjustments along the way. You can see what works, but you got to do a lot of testing, uh, because no matter how good you are It just— things just happen. You're gonna figure out, okay, this ad campaign is the way we're going to tweak. I'm going to try this. We'll do split testing, stuff like that. And, uh, and don't rush for an agency. You gave the examples. Yes, you talked to someone, they, they said, I did 5 agencies, none of them work. That's a red flag because they're probably rushing into everything, you know, that they're, you know, they didn't get results in a week, they just gave up. So, you know, you probably do not want to deal with those kind of clients. And, and another important thing you mentioned, know your numbers. You gotta know what you know. Too many businesses don't know their numbers. And if you don't even know your numbers, you don't know what to do because it's the same. What gets measured gets managed. You can only manage your business if you know your numbers. So yeah, how much is a customer worth to you? Or how much are you willing to spend to get a customer? You need to know those things. Or, you know, like you said, when you start running the ads, you can figure out more data and then you figure out where to proceed from there. So, and I like you mentioned that the agency should have a vision of your business. And what— and very important, what kind of results and, you know, return of investment you get on, because that's the most important thing. Are you— you know, you mentioned yours gets like usually 3.5 to 4%. Can't guarantee that, but you need to know what kind of ROI, return on investment, are you getting for people. Those are important things to do. So that's some really great stuff that you've been sharing all, you know, throughout this interview. And listen, Hernan, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a real pleasure having you on.

Thank you.

You shared a lot of great value, shared a lot of great wisdom and tips, and I know the people listening to this interview really appreciate all the great stuff that you shared. And Vernon, before we let you go, if people want to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to contact you?

Uh, so yeah, Hernan Vazquez in all the networks. If you check us out, we have content all over the place. We have YouTube channel, we have, you know, TikTok, Instagram, pretty much everywhere. scaledriven.com, it's our main website, scaledriven.com. And then, uh, yeah, that's, that's how we can get in touch.

Awesome. Hernan, thanks again for being on the show. Have yourself an amazing day.

Thanks, man. It's been awesome. Thank you for having me.

Bye-bye.