About Me

When I first started in business, I had no clue what it even meant to be in business. I thought I was just working for myself. No boss, no schedule to follow… just me and what I wanted to do.

I started in real estate. People were not going to come to me just because I was in the business. It doesn’t happen. You have to let people know that you are in business. That’s where marketing becomes a top priority in business. It’s the lifeblood of your business. The backbone if you will. If you have no clients, you’ll go broke. I don’t care how good your product or service is.

Make sense?

This is the reason why I invested over $15,000 in my first seminar and coaching program that taught me how to generate leads for my business and build a team.

The concept taught was simple.

They told me “no one in their right mind reads the real estate classifieds unless they are looking to buy a home….. Your job is to place an ad in front of these buyers and offer them something they can’t resist….”

This was so simple I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it myself!

Now, fifteen grand is a chunk of change and by the time I was done with the program I’d spent all my money. I was stuck. I had all this education and no cash to run my business.

I knew that if I placed an ad in the classifieds people would find me as long as I offered them something they couldn’t resist. (people couldn’t resist a free list of bank foreclosures!)

It would cost me about $54.00 to run an ad in the newspaper which I couldn’t afford.

Really, I was that broke!

I actually started looking for a job since I had more debt than money in my savings account…. Something I’d never done. I never spent more money than I had. (Thanks a lot credit cards!)

This was the lowest point of my life. $15,000 in education and I was failing? Not only that, I was letting down my parents, who helped me get into the business to begin with?

It was devastating. I knew too much about being in business to even think about working for someone else. I didn’t want to rent myself out. The thought alone made me puke.

I remember a quote from Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad book that said “it doesn’t take money to make money”.

It is true. I had no choice but to make this work even if I had no money. I started placing ads on Craigslist which is a free classifieds website. Within a couple of weeks I got a lead which bought a house from me within the first week I worked with them.

They were the real estate agent’s dream come true. Not picky, friendly and they acted quick. They bought the fourth house we looked at. Most buyers looked at 30-40 homes on average! Unbelievable!

Not only that, they bought the least expected home, which was aqua marine cottage home built in the 70’s. Definitely not your average buyer.

I got my commission check 6 days before bills were due. It was godsend. It reinforced the fact that it doesn’t take money to make money.

It was no accident, I knew what I did. I placed an ad, people called (the right people… as in ready-to-act buyers) and I sold them. Now all I had to do was lather, rinse, repeat….

The money I made from this sale helped me get through until my next sale… and the next sale, until I dug myself out of the hole I was in. It’s crazy to even think I was about to quit right before my biggest success! I even had my excuse for it… it was literally the worst month in real estate history…. January 2008… inventory was at 19 months and it was the lowest month as far as total real estate transactions. Yeah, I almost blamed the market for my failure.

I’m glad I kept on going…

Online marketing became a big part of my business and I looked for more ways to make use of this powerful machine.

I found Google.

In my mind I thought “…No one in their right mind would type ‘homes for sale’ unless they were looking to buy a home”

This was breakthrough advertising!

See, here’s how this works… you can tell Google to show your ad only when someone types in a keyword that you define such as ‘homes for sale’. Then you would only pay if the person searching clicks on your ad…

Pay attention now, this is important! If your ad doesn’t get clicked, it means people are not finding what you offer interesting. I remember from the coaching program that “…. You must offer your prospects something they can’t resist…”

If my ad showed something they couldn’t resist, they would click on it…. And they did!

This took my game to a whole new level because I was able to perfect my message and I started to generate leads on demand… I didn’t know that it was possible to generate more business than one could actually handle!

I actually fell in love with online marketing and wanted to look into it deeper. I searched for gurus on the subject and again bought more seminars and books. I started to become a seminar junkie!

By that time, the real estate market had become depressed and buyers were now looking at 70-80 homes on average (I looked at 94 homes with one client!)… the average homebuyer went from buying a $280,000 home to a $150,000 home. This meant, I had to work twice as much for half the commission. There was still plenty of money to be made, but online marketing became my passion. I enjoyed it more than real estate.

Online I was automating my business and working less. So I started to think of ways I could sell online without having to get out of the house to show 80 homes.

I had just made $24,000 in real estate sales the month prior which gave me a big cushion to switch careers. It was the perfect time.

I didn’t exactly quit real estate… I’m still involved, but I decided to get into information marketing online. I had two ideas.

The business I chose was information marketing on various niches… and online marketing consulting.

The reason why, again, is because I enjoy marketing more than I do real estate.

The first good niche I found was in network marketing…

These people are like real estate agents. They cold call, bug their friends, family and neighbors and talk to people at the grocery store. Real estate agents hold time-wasting open houses while network marketers go to time-wasting hotel meetings.

They need my help!

Most have no clients and because of it they are going broke!… (like I was…)

It’s a shame seeing them try the business for a week only to turn around and say that they were scammed. In reality they just never got the right education.

Most people will never spend $15,000 on themselves. Otherwise I would just tell them to go through the education I went trough, but I know what it’s like when you’re broke. You can’t spend that much!

So I packaged what I had learned from experience into this blog so people can actually access the education that cost me four thousand times more than what I’m selling it for!

This is a business model I can automate. It doesn’t require my presence. Most importantly I enjoy it. This is very important if you want to succeed in business. Invest in your education, find people with a need and offer them something they can’t resist!

That’s what my business model for my various niches is all about… use it!

Jorge

PS If you’d like to get a free consultation on how to use Google AdWords, Copywriting, Email Marketing and SEO to boost your business, then visit our free consultation page