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The LFG Show
Unleash YouTube Ad Success: Ralph Moretta’s Masterclass in Media Buying 🌟📈
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🔥 What if a single insight could revolutionize your affiliate marketing game?
This week on The LFG Show, we bring you Rafael Moreta—a master YouTube media buyer with a unique edge: his background as a Series 7 licensed broker. Rafael unlocks the real secrets of media buying success, diving into consumer psychology, patience, and planning for long-term wins.
🚨 Think YouTube ads are easy? Think again. Rafael shares:
✅ Newbie mistakes that cost fortunes.
✅ Why YouTube leads dominate high-ticket sales.
✅ The art of scaling smartly without blowing your budget.
Making the leap from Meta to YouTube? Rafael’s expert advice will help you navigate YouTube's volatile yet rewarding landscape, teaching you how to thrive in even the trickiest verticals while keeping your finances in check.
🌍 But it’s bigger than media buying. Rafael also explores Medellin, Colombia—a paradise for digital nomads blending affordability, lifestyle, and unmatched networking opportunities.
From syncing sales with media buying to leveraging AI for scalable lead gen, this episode is a blueprint for marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to dominate!
💥 BIG SHOUTOUT to our sponsor, Ringba!
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Speaker 1:We're in Medellin in the background over there, but Brooklyn is in the house. Today I got my man, ralph Moretta. He's a fucking master YouTube media buyer. I'm going to dive deep into YouTube, dive deep into media buying. I'm pumped up to be here with you. By the way, we just got fucking kicked out. We're in the lobby of Novotel. Man, how often have you been kicked out of places? You're from Brooklyn, man. I'm sure you still getting kicked out. Man. This shit happens, man.
Speaker 1:It happens, bro. It happens you and me both. It happens, man. That's what happens when New York's in the house. Man, no doubt, no doubt. So listen we're here, man. We're here, Bro. We've known each other for a very long time, right? I think over like your third decade in the game, right?
Speaker 3:I mean, I've been doing this since 2011. So, yeah, we're talking about 13,. 14 years, yeah, 13 years.
Speaker 1:And, bro, one thing I can say the time I've known you, any time I hang out with you, I learn more about you. Last time we were having dinner, we were with John, we were with a bunch of people in the industry. I didn't realize how extensive your sales and calls in their background when you were a Series 7 licensed right, you were a broker at one time Series 7, 24.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Yep, and I think that gives you a different perspective than the traditional media buyer, because you're able to look at things from the consumer perspective right, and as a salesperson, we're always looking at how do you get someone to say yeah, and as a media buyer, you're getting someone to click on that right. So would you agree that gives you a different perspective on things than most media buyers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. I mean, when you're doing sales it's even media buying in general you're always using some type of persuasion, right, and sales is part of that. But when you're doing sales, you're seeing what's happening. You're not just talking to somebody and hoping to fill out a form, like you're trying to get the deal done, get the money through, and then you see what that ends up being coming through commissions or so on and so forth. So you're seeing the backend, how it works, like, yeah, it's, while the media buying guys or girl is generating forms and sending leads and refreshing stats cool but I'm actually receiving those leads, talking to the people and getting them to take the action that's necessary. So I think that gives you an advantage.
Speaker 3:Because of how I perceive the things that I'm doing, I feel like a lot of affiliates they're just trying to get whatever they can get through to generate some revenue. Right, because they're just looking at, hey, I just want to see get paid this whatever 15th next week, so on and so forth. But I know like, hey, if I send the leads and we're talking about Legion in particular that our quality and the person's happy with they're going to want to work with me for a very long time, and that makes more sense, at least from my point of view, you think like most, because I'm gonna ask you what?
Speaker 1:what do most newbies or people that are struggling get wrong? Get wrong.
Speaker 3:I mean, it sounds like they just throw shit against the wall and hoping something will stick when you say that's the case or no I mean, I think the thing, the biggest thing behind it, is, just when you throw the word affiliate marketing, the first things that you start thinking about are at least someone that doesn't know are those pop-ups that you see if you go to a site. You're trying to watch a free fight or something like that. Those type of things Win an iPhone and things of that nature, and those offers exist for sure, but you don't really think about it as what it really is is a referral service, affiliate marketing, just a fancy, a different way, an angle, so to speak, of saying referral service, because you could be the moment that you're sending a lead to, let's just say, a home service or something like that. You're doing affiliate marketing. But it's the same thing.
Speaker 3:But people don't really think about it that way. They just think about like, oh, how can I get this person to click on this? Or how can I get this person to fill out this form? Oh, you want an iPhone. So from the beginning you just have this perception of trickery, for lack of a better word. So, yeah, a lot of people trying to get into that on that end, a lot of people get that. Start with that stuff. I mean, I've been there as well. So, yeah, you're throwing a lot of stuff against the wall or shit you can curse here, right yeah?
Speaker 1:of course, throw a lot of shit. Let's fucking go, man. Let's fucking go, sean man, let's fucking go yeah.
Speaker 3:So you could throw a lot. So, yeah, a lot of newbies are throwing shit against the wall. See what sticks. They're deciding which traffic source. They're following the next person on YouTube that says something 30K a day in Facebook ads. But they don't know. That's just revenue, you know. They probably maybe made 300, maybe a thousand dollars. They were lucky and it is easy. It's so difficult to find what is truly working. You know, or really understand, what's truly working. To find what's working is easy because you use the spy tools, you can see it out there, but you get an idea. But you really don't have that belief unless you actually meet someone that's actually doing the numbers or doing it and making it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when did you crack it, man? Because you were a serious settlement, you've done sales, you were a debt settlement floor right. When was your like let's fucking go aha moment, where like, okay, bro, I can fucking do this okay, bro, I can fucking do this.
Speaker 3:I want to say, when I started doing well, I had moments when I had early success, but it was like one of them offers that would just work right away for everybody.
Speaker 1:It's like when you first gamble.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like when you first gamble. I first gambled Puerto Rico. I remember it won $300 in Relent and I was like I'm going to quit because I was doing a broker job $300 in uh, you do that forever. And I was like I'm gonna quit because I was doing broker job $300 a week. I'm like I can't do this. I'm gonna do gambling whatever. Shout out to Jovi, um, gambling for sure, that's what I was gonna do.
Speaker 3:But like, going back to when I uh, when I first started, I had my first success. It was one of these offers that I mean, it was. You know, I didn't want to talk about the offer anymore. It was one of the easy to convert offers and google just search, and I was just like man, this is easy. I was making what year was it like? 2012, dude? This was like 20 I want to say 13 or 14, right, and I was just like I got it made, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:But then, you know, like everything else, I'm talking about a time when people were selling music tunes and stuff like that. You know, a lot of carrier subscription building Forgot about that. Yeah, that's how back. But along those ways I really struggled a lot with a lot of things. And then I want to say, you know, once I started funny thing I got confidence before anything when I started working corporate uh, back in I want to say 2014-15, I'm not quite sure. Uh, that's when I had like an official gig doing what I did. And back then my thing was just google search and, um, I was working with microsoft and I was like I mean, microsoft hired me, I must be doing something right. And that's where I started managing, uh, real budgets for the first time. I'm talking, you know, a million dollars a month, so on and so forth, and looking at other accounts. So that's when I first started getting confidence, like, all right, cool, I know what I'm doing, but it's a different animal when you're working for something you know like Microsoft per se.
Speaker 3:And then, after that, once I got into YouTube ads which was probably five, six years ago, I don't remember exactly and I started running high ticket courses and things of that nature and you start running a couple of hundred a day, a couple of thousand a day. And then you're just like I remember my first big month I'm spending like 600 grand and we generated probably double that in profit close to that and I was just like, okay, I belong. So from that moment, that's what gives you the confidence. And I already set up a process, a system. I've taught people how to do it and I think that just makes it even bigger.
Speaker 3:I've actually taught people how to do it. They're doing it successfully. I know people out there that they did it successfully in affiliate. They did it successfully having their own agencies. And just the fact that I brought my knowledge, my SOPs and taught other people and now they're just they're blowing it up, that, to me, is satisfactory. So that, to me, gives me all the confidence that I need. I'm not going to say that some days that you learn something and you're like this again, like it's not working, I don't know what I'm doing, so on and so forth, those thoughts always creep into your mind. But I mean, ultimately, if I just look at the results and what's happened, I'm just like, okay, I know I can do this, I'm confident in what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:There is a new endeavor called roofs in the box. It's just from day one it's taken off.
Speaker 2:When I first started getting into the roofing industry, what was happening was my fixed costs were always there, and so for me, I was looking at how can we kind of one, save on these costs and then, two, how do I not lay people off during down times, but also maybe even the ability to pocket more money during the slow season or even the peak season. Since we've done this before, like with our Legion companies where we have virtual staffing and from Argentina or Colombia, I'm like why don't we do the same thing in the construction business? Now, once we figured it out, we reduced their fixed costs by 70%, and so now during the downtime they have real seasoned veteran type of players, but during the uptime they pocket. 70% of their operational costs are now going back in their pocket, and then, when it's time to scale, you have the back end prepared, already ready to go to help them. Like lift off, depending on what state you're in, you're averaging about 12.5% on what you pay out on taxes, insurance, like all the different insurances that you have to pay out, right, so, yeah, you don't have to pay out unemployment, you don't have to pay out bike insurance, medicare, social Security, the things that business owners have to eat.
Speaker 2:Roofs in the Box is not just limited to roofing or home improvement companies. You can use it for any services, right? You can use it for IT. We use them internally for data sales, for hygiene, for analytics. It doesn't even matter what the vertical is. It's like business in the box at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Pretty much, yeah. So I want to talk about the YouTube stuff because I feel like I'm not a media buyer but I work with media buyers and you know, my big thing was solar. I still do solar to this day. Youtube, from my solar experience and home improvement experience it's so hard to crack and everyone, their mothers, they figure out meta Facebook, right. Some guys a few, a few have figured out TikTok, but I feel like the fact that you're going to figure out YouTube puts you in a different echelon because that's I remember the volatility with that. We had a media buyer that fucking was starting to do six figures a day, 100,000 a day in solar, which was unheard of. It's probably one of only two on YouTube, right, but he'd have weeks where it was what's going on, the volume's all over, but it's super, super volatile, man. So I mean, would you agree with that assessment and what? What makes it so difficult, man? How were you able to crack it?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think I think youtube becomes volatile depending on how you you push it across the board, right? So youtube is one of those things that is not a platform that really reacts as quickly as you want it to. I think the number one, the number one problem in most cases when running YouTube ads is that people just they just want to scale right away. Like none of this. $100 a day Like yo, I want to spend $10,000 a day, $50,000 a day, and there's some instances that has happened that I know people that have done that. But it's more in cases where you have an offer with a really broad appeal or just the offer is so good or so new, you know when solar came out?
Speaker 2:yeah, of course some of it.
Speaker 3:You just get lucky and then you, like you know, you will master you. Yeah, because you got lucky once. But the reality is anything that I've made work in youtube, it's taking time to get it there and then, when it's gotten there, I have my own systems that I use to do the scaling where it keeps you as consistent as possible. So if you tell me, for example, hey, wow, you got good lead quality. You sent me 100 leads today. I'm going to need I don't know 500 leads tomorrow, I'm going to have to push back. I'm like I don't know if I can get that to you the next day. Can I get to that point in a more progressive manner? Yeah, and it'll be more consistent because I could do it. I could bump up the budgets, I could launch some more campaigns and it might be there for a day or two.
Speaker 3:But then, like you said, then you have a day where nothing happens, yeah. Or you have a day where I may spend double the money and I get like cost per lead five times higher. That happens. Cost per lead five times higher, that happens. So it's a matter of really planning well and doing it time and time again.
Speaker 3:Now, as far as a soldier or whatever, I think you're in a good position because you actually you hire up in the food chain, you know. But when you're dealing like you're trying to generate a lead and you can't pay, I don't know, $20, $15, that's going to be almost impossible in something like YouTube on a consistent basis at scale, because YouTube just tends to be a more expensive platform. Now, having said that, I'm not going to say I haven't gotten like 50 cent clicks, 60 cent clicks, because I do. You know, it depends what you're doing, especially if you're doing shorts. But the reality is, the closer you are to the end buyer, the more beneficial it is to you. And you know guys, I mean I know companies out there and they literally have built their company doing stuff on YouTube. And it's the same ad We've seen that you stand in front of a counter a meter and then you're like oh, you know, government, whatever, local incentives, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 3:So it's just a matter of of having that, having that consistency, having your account structured in a way where, um, you can deliver a certain volume. That's consistent. But if you're trying to like go from zero to 100 right away, it may work for a few days, but it's not. It's not gonna hold for a long time, especially if you have just one campaign. I would love to have just one campaign. Unfortunately, that hasn't worked for me. I've heard it work for other people that have killed it. Bless their souls. That doesn't work for me. So I am more of the school of thought. I'm a lazy media buyer. I like to set my things and then check it once a day and if it's working, cool, I increase. If it's not, I pause, want some more stuff, analyze the data that's how I like doing it and that's what I like about YouTube.
Speaker 1:Let's say you're someone who's done very well meta. That's been your platform right Facebook, instagram for the longest time and you're trying to break into YouTube. What would be your advice to someone like that? Or maybe you struggled with YouTube in the past and you want to try it again.
Speaker 3:I mean, my advice would be pretty much repeating what I just said. As far as patience, just be patient. You don't have to dupe a million ads. You don't have to get to $5,000 a day right away. Now. If you got the money, hey, you can launch campaigns at five thousand dollars to get from the get and most likely you probably gonna lose money that first day or second day. You know, if you have that pain tolerance, that's the quickest way to get there. But other than that, like facebook, it's just right away. It tells you like oh, this is good.
Speaker 3:Youtube is a little bit more patient. But I will say this because and I've seen this when we ran uh campaigns on youtube and meta for uh high ticket courses, youtube got higher quality youtube. I spent way more money on youtube high ticket stuff than I did on facebook. Um, I will say also this if you're trying to run something that's very, very low ticket, don't even use YouTube, don't even touch it, because it's not. It's just not the same. You know, like you're trying to get like a five dollar payout or even an eight dollar payout. I'm not saying you can't do it, but it's. It's just way harder. Youtube really shines when it comes to something that really has a higher value and a very broad appeal.
Speaker 1:Higher intent is what it comes down to at the end of the day and Big Slice. You gave really good advice there with those two questions. I asked you Because, for me, the most successful people I've seen in this industry they're not fucking blowing their money. They treat their money like bro. If I can't make this work with $25 a day, I a day I'm not going to go to 50 until I make it work with 25 a day. I'm not going to go to 100 until I make 50 work. They gradually scale right and I think what happens a lot of times. What I've seen is that when people have had success, that's when they get fucked they think it's like, okay, I'm going to go no-transcript to make it there. Man Correct.
Speaker 3:And the thing is and I'm not saying I'm speaking out of experience, like I've done this too. I'm like, oh yeah, I think you have to we all have done this too increase the budget. But lo and behold, google didn't really refresh the stats. So I'm thinking I'm profitable and then, before you know it, I'm in the hole. So, yeah, I don't think you need a largest budget as possible. You want to really give the algo its time that it needs. And when I say time, I mean I launched a campaign. I want to wait at least 48 hours before I make a decision.
Speaker 3:In an ideal situation, we always fall into a trap. When I say we, I mean like media buyers or affiliates, like, oh, we have one good day and that's it. Like the ad is good. You don't know that. You know If you start out and the ad is bad, it's probably going to be bad. But if the ad is good, it doesn't mean anything. It's just you got to give it some time and then once time will tell and you can have one ad.
Speaker 3:The cool thing about youtube once you figure the stuff out the offer, the, the ad, um, and even the targeting. Sometimes I know people act like targeting doesn't work or whatever. But that's that's false. I mean, yes, it's better now, but targeting does help out for other things, for scaling. You realize that when you start doing that stuff, you can't make those decisions so quickly. You got to give it time.
Speaker 3:And if you're patient and that's the issue it's like everything else, it's like you know. I mean, whatever your hobby is, this is you trading, you do $50. It's like I want to do $1,000 next time. And this is you trading you do fifty dollars, like I want to do a thousand the next time. And it's like no bro, have consistency. Let the results teach you what. Uh, let the results confirm that what you think you're theorizing is correct, and that's it. And once you do that, you realize okay, this works. Um, once again, some campaigns. It's taking me two months to get the stuff right, to get it right, but once it was right, it was easy. It took me 10 minutes a day. I would check, that's it. And there you go.
Speaker 3:But I think that's the biggest thing as far as Facebook versus YouTube. Really be patient with it. Really understand not all verticals are going to work, especially not. Not all verticals are going to work, especially not. And when I say verticals, I mean like not all things with depending on the AOV, not everything's going to work. You know, if you have something with a low AOV, it's probably not going to work. As well as simple as that. Youtube shines with high ticket stuff and it's really don't mess with it too much. The less you mess with it, the better it is.
Speaker 3:For example, let's just say I launched a campaign, even in Facebook or Meta, whatever people want to call it nowadays. I launched it at $100 a day and it starts pumping out leads. I bet you, if I don't touch that campaign ever, it'll always produce that. But what's the problem? I don't want five leads, I want like 500, you know. So that's the key Be patient and really stick to very strict rules. Know your and really stick to very strict rules. Know your KPIs, know what your good, ctr, cpm, all that stuff, because you can disqualify an ad beforehand. Yeah, sometimes, at the end of the day, what matters is what you spend versus what you generate in revenue. That's the most important thing. But sometimes you get early signals like yo, I'm getting $6 a click. Well, guess what? That's not going to go down to two and you know that's not going to be profitable six dollars a click.
Speaker 1:Well, guess what? That's not gonna go down to two and you know that's not gonna be profitable. So what's working right now? What kind of verticals you see working? The bell you mentioned high ticket, obviously something. Anything. That's kind of where you get a good payout right. Would you say that, or are they? Yeah?
Speaker 3:you get a good payout.
Speaker 1:Like you know what is that payout number? You say what's the line in the sand?
Speaker 3:I want to say for me, I like 50, 60 dollars. Me personally, that's what I prefer. Um, I'm not saying you can't get some legion stuff at 20 to work, but at scale that's that that gets really tricky, to be honest. Um, a safer number is 100, 100. So you get that, some of that stuff like in the supplement space, if you can get past creating an ad, because nowadays YouTube made it.
Speaker 3:So the thing about YouTube YouTube became popular because a lot of people were getting their Facebook ad accounts shut down and then YouTube was taking everybody, and that always happens. Google starts taking everybody and they start becoming strict. Right now, youtube is starting to become strict, so you get a lot of ad disproved, especially in the health space. So it was easier to run ads to like supplements for tinnitus or Prodental, whatever stuff for your teeth, stuff that magically heals you, but nowadays a little bit harder. But if you can get those ads to pass by, that works. And that works perfect because it goes to a BSL. So it makes sense. You're watching a video and now you're going to watch a video for the offer and you convert.
Speaker 3:But YouTube also works for home service lead gen. You want to play around with regular ads versus shorts, see what works well. But once again, it depends on the payout. You're getting $50out, you're getting 50 bucks, you're getting 60 bucks and, yeah, you can get stuff for like 25 35 dollars a lead and I don't want to say crazy scale, but you know, 4, 6k a day you can do that. I've done it. That's how I know it can be done. But that's. Those are the main things. I wouldn't try to push. I don't know an opt-in, just an opt-in. Someone gets paid for opting in for an email address.
Speaker 1:It'd be more for something, that's high-ticket course, there's more meat on the bone. At the end of the day, what's that? Something that has more meat on the bone? Correct when it comes down to it.
Speaker 3:Correct, and you don't want to do it for something that's short-term either, like you do it for some short-term offer that they might take off next week. You don't want to do that either because it takes time to figure it out. You know, like I've been approaching the past and I've done it, where I've consulted and ran YouTube ads for, you know, launches and stuff like that. But that gets really tricky. That works very well when someone has an audience, like someone that's really well known, that type of stuff, it works well as well. But like you're just trying to do a launch and trying to spend I don't know fives, 10k a day off the bat that's not going to work, only a recipe for disaster at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're doing is making google richer. Yeah, 100, it's got to be rich enough. So what other platforms you see? Like what? What's what? What else is like I don't know something, something different. Everyone's on meta, right, everyone's on facebook. I mean, there's youtube's been around, become harder. They're like, you see anything else up and coming?
Speaker 3:um, up and coming. I'd mean Naver's been around too. People have been using that, you know. I'd say, experiment with more of the other alternative Google options out there, because you know you do have Performance Max. You do have Google Demand Gen. I'm sure a lot of people are not testing things with them because people think you can't run affiliate stuff on Google which you can't run affiliate stuff on Google which you can. I know because I've been doing it for a while. So I would say those platforms. Performance Max, what it does is that it uses all of Google's properties display, youtube search, so on and so forth. It just figures it out for you. It's a little bit black box, but I mean when it works. It's worked Specifically for me. It's worked a lot on e-comm.
Speaker 3:I can't say on lead gen. I've tested it too much. I have tested demand gen on lead gen and that's given me some results. I haven't scaled there, though, either. Demand gen is Google's answer to like Facebook. So if you want to like the five people in the US that have Android phones, like I do there you go Team Android baby.
Speaker 3:You could see it in your Google feed. You could also see it on YouTube. It only shows up on Google properties. So just because of that, google's going to have more knowledge about the user, because Google has way more knowledge than any other platform about you and the quality should be better. So I'd say those two things are probably the things that people should start testing out, on top of the fact that YouTube actually for YouTube campaigns so not to get too deep into the weeds, but YouTube campaigns you have different bidding types, so one of them is a conversion bidding type. That's what most people use. That's going to be moved to demand jet anyways, so you might as well start learning about that beforehand, and that's going to be moved to the mansion anyways.
Speaker 3:So you might as well start learning about that beforehand, and that's going to be, I don't know, somewhere in 2025, I think I don't remember the date, but it's pretty soon.
Speaker 1:You just dropped some ColumbiaCon knowledge right there, man, hey, man, you know.
Speaker 3:I got to give the goods, if not, I won't get invited again to this wonderful room.
Speaker 1:That's a good segue. Here we're going to switch the subject. Now we're going to talk about Medellin. When did you move here again?
Speaker 3:Dude, I moved here in 2009.
Speaker 1:Wow, 2009,. Yeah Bro, 2009. My first time here was 2016. I've seen the fucking massive changes in 2016. I can't imagine what 2009 was like over here man.
Speaker 3:I mean, my first time here was 2006. Wow, so yeah. But for 2009, a lot of these buildings didn't exist, like you would go up the hills and you would just be able to see the rest of the city. Now you got some views that just blocked by all these skyscrapers, all these buildings. A lot has changed.
Speaker 3:Uh, culture wise, it's been coming a little bit more americanized. You know, simple stuff that you wouldn't think about, like even going to a restaurant and I, I don't know having ramen or something that was hard to find. Now you have that everywhere. You got all these sushi places everywhere. I'm not saying they didn't have sushi, they had that, but everything was just rice and beans. You know rice and beans and chicharron, yeah, and that was it. And drinks guano and pizza, and that was it. And drinks Guado and a pizza, and that was it, you know. So a lot has changed, a lot.
Speaker 3:I want to say that it's still. I still love living here. Just, you know, the cost of living does play a part, but it's become more expensive. It's not as expensive as it used to be, but it's just the lifestyle Like. For me, everything is 10, 15 minutes away because of where I choose to live. Also, I have wonderful views. I wake up every morning, I look outside. I see the mountains. You know, if it's raining and the weather is never too hot, it's never way too cold, it's never too humid. You know you're in Florida, so you know about that.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, step outside that car.
Speaker 3:You feel it, it's like you're trying to get back in there. But you know, sometimes it rains, sometimes it's sunny, but it's awesome. It's always home. You know, at times I'm not going to lie, at times I'm like, all right, I need some more action. That that's fine, I'll take a little trip and I'll come back in a few days. You have that mountain smell, you know, when you're coming down the mountain, you're coming down Rio Negro, and then you come out that tunnel. You see Medellin, it never gets old. It never gets old.
Speaker 1:How do you feel that being here has benefited you in terms of a media buyer in your business?
Speaker 3:I mean it's benefited me immensely because this is where I started. I got into media buying because I had a call center right and I had a call center that was a debt settlement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had a call center, and I had a call center because it was affordable to do that here at the at the time. You talk about wages and things of that nature. So it allowed me to because, you know, being from New York, I'm here. I had no family here, so allow me to experiment. Sometimes entrepreneurship is a difficult thing, but that's something Lonely man Always a difficult. It's a difficult thing because you're not going to have a lot of people behind you and you're going to suck for a long time. You don't know how long you're going to suck for right. So being over here gave me the opportunity to just be able to not have other outside influences, be able to be a place where I didn't know anybody and just put my head down and do what I have to do. Now we're talking about modern day even me yearning YouTube ads, the way I got the job.
Speaker 3:I met someone online who just happened to be living in Medellin. I applied for the job and he was like when can you? I was like yo, I'm right across the street when you at right now and I showed up and I met people because they're coming down here Like people have been discovering the place. Now I mean even you and I, we got other people coming down the Columbia Con. That happened recently.
Speaker 3:So to me it's beneficial and it just makes sense. As far as you know, you have other locations that other people like and talk about, but you know a lot of our business is done in the States, let's be real. So this, the proximity, is like three hours, three and a half hours away from Miami, five and a half hours if I want to go to New York where my family's at, and on top of that the time zone, everything. It just makes sense. And now you know, when I first came here, not a lot of people spoke English, but now that's been changing as well and they're more adapted to the culture. So you know, if I really wanted to say, hey, I want to get an assistant, or things of that nature, that's available to you as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also I feel like the community man, there's a lot of affiliates here. I saw that, columbia. I think half the people that were there lived here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's something that's been growing since the last few. I mean, there's probably people here when I first got here that I didn't know that existed here. But yeah, I've met a lot of people that travel the world and at the end of the day at some point, and I've met people that have been telling me for years like oh, I'm leaving Medellin, I'm going to find somewhere else, and I see them in the coffee shop like bro, I thought you were leaving, what's going on? So it's just a wonderful place and a lot of people like coming here, so affiliate, and they realize that like you can get you know not to be.
Speaker 3:I mean you get maid service, your private salsa instructor, private language instructor, all these amenities that you would think would cost lots and lots of money back home because they probably would. You get that available to you and you don't have to be, you know, a super affiliate to get all that. So it's just a different way of living. Like I learned at an early age I am lazy, I like things done for me, I like good stuff, convenience, convenience, correct. I'd rather spend my time doing anything to either grow a business, make more money, meet people, connect network, and Beijing allows for all that to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also the people. I feel like I live in South Carolina from 2012 to 2017 and you hear about the southern hospitality. I feel like here they take that shit to a whole nother level. I feel like they want you to be an ambassador when you come back to America. Yo, this place is the fucking best. Bring five more people. Bring ten more people. Do you feel that way?
Speaker 3:The funniest thing is like I mean, I don't know about your experience, but New York is the opposite. So I remember I'll go into a supermarket. I'll be like talk to the security guard, hey, where's the so-and-so thing? And he look at me like good afternoon.
Speaker 2:And I'm like good afternoon good afternoon, bro.
Speaker 3:Now could you tell me where's the stuff? But it's just part of their culture. Like they're really just about like yo. They want to say hi, say bye, like even you get on the elevator and everyone stays quiet and everyone's like have a good day. Yeah, you know. So it's a cool thing, it is a nice thing. It's something that you really don't appreciate until once you leave here, like I'm in New York, I'm like damn, it was bad, like what's going on? You know, but that's New York. You know it's part of that hate-love relationship. But here the people, yeah, they're very nice, they're very polite and that helps. That helps, especially when you wake up and you feel like you're going to conquer the world and nothing works out. At the end of the day, at least I leave. You know, people are nice. I got a nice restaurant. Go have dinner, have a nice bottle, a glass of wine, go home, look outside at my balcony and look at the mountains and then be like tomorrow's another day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's something peaceful about being here. It's a weird, it's hard to describe, it's very unique, I think you, you feel that you got that city, little hustle and bustle, but it's not overwhelming, but it's a nice feeling, right, especially for me. Right, I travel all over the world and when I go to new york, I, I pick up. When I go to jersey too, I'm like I, I step it up right here, I I have a little pep in my step, but it's just, it's. I don't have that sense of stress and that crazy sense of urgency. I feel a little bit more calmer man. It's something in the air, for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean it's the fucking weather.
Speaker 3:I don't know what it is but it's crazy. You definitely walked two miles an hour slower here, than in New York. I get to New York I'm like yeah, it just happens right away.
Speaker 3:It's like that was nice outside. It's cool. No, this is cool. No for sure, man. I mean, it just makes sense for me and I think that's important. In anything that you do, everyone wants to be grinding and hustling and hitting it hard, but you need to give the body some rest and part of it is the culture here likes working out, so you get into working out. You could hike on the weekends, you could travel. Every city is an hour away in a plane. If you want to go to the beach, if you want to go to a bigger city like Bogota. There's too many reasons not to leave, to want to leave. There's too many reasons to stay.
Speaker 1:That's what we're doing. Columbia, compart 2, early January. That's what's up. I know a lot of you guys do a paper call. A lot of you guys have call centers. We got AI in the house. We got Neil Billick. He's the founder and the CEO of All Rise AI. They're doing big things. I'm a user of his service.
Speaker 4:We are coming in immediately for X-ing contact rates for clients. What we found in my BPO when I ran it and deployed the AI was we had 30 second wait times before the deployment between connections and my guys were making about 500 connections a day times 30 seconds. We were wasting 250 minutes a day per head in a call center.
Speaker 4:That's four hours, that's half their day, Four hours half their day or half their wages being spent on them waiting for a call. The reason your wait time's high is when you're calling out, you have an abandon rate. You have to stay under of 3%. That's programmed in your dialer. If the AI is weeding that out and I think that's- the benefit.
Speaker 1:It's collapsing timeframes, helping your top producers produce, which is what you want them to do.
Speaker 4:People are afraid AI is going to replace call center agents, and it may, but right now, use it to maximize your human resources. So, leveraging it for the tools it can be to do exactly what you're saying. Let the humans do what they can do best. Let the AI get cursed out.
Speaker 1:Right, and the good thing. Going back to the Philly committee, there was someone there I've talked about a lot. He's 200 million a year ad spend on some e-com product. What was like amazing green something. Remember about a lot. He's 200 million a year ad spend on some econ product. What was like amazing green something.
Speaker 1:Remember, remember that guy from australia, robbie. I do remember like it blew me away and you would think like who would think that? Again, not the perception you think like a lot of these heavy hitters are in fucking miami, they're in new york, they're in california, but, bro, there's heavy hitters here too putting up massive numbers. The guy was super humble and you one thing, I I didn't really get to spend as much time as I wanted with him, but my question to him would have been like why Medellin? Why you brought him here? And I would suspect it's for that fucking peace of mind, right? And I feel like when you're in America, man, everyone's trying to keep up with the Joneses. Man You're in Miami, everyone's got a fucking Lamborghini, they got this, they got that, bro, and it fucking liver. But I would imagine maybe there's less.
Speaker 3:You know you don't fucking have to show off, and if you do, you fucking show off here you're getting fucking robbed too right? I don't wear fucking fans, I don't bring it. I've seen ferrari see and I'm like I don't know. That's a good idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, especially with the mountains and stuff, real man. But it's like I think it's like it's you focus on. What the fuck matters is what it comes down to. There's a lot of nature here and you could like lock in is what you could do, I would imagine. Right, that's what.
Speaker 3:I think I mean, if you, whether you're by yourself, you have a family, you have a place where you can get away, you have the mountains right there, you have the combination of the city, if you want it, and the countryside is like maybe 40 minutes away, it's chilling. So I mean, I don't know why he chose it, I can only speak to me, but it's just when you are in certain cities, I feel like it's good to certain point that, especially when you're on the come up like getting ambitious and oh, because when you see other people making moves, or yeah, or at least, looking like you're like, oh man, now you start thinking your aspirations weren't good enough.
Speaker 3:You want high, you want more money, so on and so forth. But once you conquer that mentally and you come to a point where like, hey, I'm happy, I'm good if I make this much. Anything else is just me keeping score, then it is a matter of where you want to sit down and disconnect, where you want to do your things, what you want your day-to-day to look like. Like some people value their health more than anything, yeah, you know, but other people, they want that chaos. I feel like this gives a little bit of peace living here to the chaos. That is what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. Final question for you is we talked about. We're coming back to where we started off with. What's the future of Legion in your opinion? A lot of changes have happened. Right, fucking paper calls been, I feel, like making a comeback. You have people, some guys just focus on web forums. You got you know. We talked about YouTube. What do you think? Where do you think this is all going? What's the future of this?
Speaker 3:I think the future is the long game, and by that I mean it's not about can I generate a thousand leads in a week. It's really about how do you create the audience of people that are into what you're talking about and actually have these needs right? You see it everywhere. You see the podcast, you see influencers, so on and so forth. And, yeah, some of these things are like roofing, like oh, no one's going to be excited about roofing, but people with homes you know, if you have an audience of, let's just say, mothers that create certain crafts in the home, when you talk about roofing, who are they going to go to? They're going to go to the person that they buy the courses from, the person that they talk to, the person that they like their content, so on and so forth. I think that's where the future is going.
Speaker 3:Arbitrage, these arbitrage opportunities, because that's what we're doing. Arbitrage always going to exist. But if you think of the long game and you really put in the effort, I think that's where it's at. It's really. And now, with AI, there's no reason you can't generate content at scale. So if you generate the right content at scale, you get the right audience. You really dig into your avatar. You can sell that person a million things, whether it's affiliate, whether it's your own thing. I think that's where it's going, but once again, it's patience. No one wants to hear that, yeah you're right.
Speaker 1:That was a great answer, by the way, because I do fully believe that you got this one-to-one consent going on. All this stuff is going on and I think it's going to come to higher quality and, at the end of the day, if you're producing that quality, you're going to get reimbursed for that. You're going to be able to charge a premium for that lead Correct? So you got to think outside the box and play that long game rightads. I think that an issue. I see there's some employees in America.
Speaker 1:People are fucking strapped. That inflation is real. I know there's inflation going on here too, but the cost of living in America is to the fucking roof. I don't care if you live in fucking Tennessee, if you live in New York, it's everywhere. So I think that if you can be somewhere, there's a life hack. If you can be pressure where you're not going to have to throw crazy shit against the wall to try to sell bullshit leads to be able to put food in your mouth for your family. It gives you a little bit of takes the pressure off you so you can actually focus on delivering a good quality for your client man, of course. So I think that's.
Speaker 3:That was a key reason for me moving here. When I did, I was like living in New York. That time rent was 2 G's and you're still Was that one bedroom?
Speaker 1:What was it back then? For 2 G's it was probably.
Speaker 3:Maybe it was a two bedroom be all the way in Jamaica, queens or all the way uptown. You know, yeah, you know, and nah I. It doesn't make sense. You look at your check. Let's say I was making $4,000 a month. Of that, taxes and everything, oh yeah, I get $2,700 left. If I rent a room, it's another $1,000. I got $1,700 to get up and down to eat and to do whatever I want to do. That's not money.
Speaker 1:I mean you and I both know that's not money in New York. No, you can't do shit, man. You can't do anything. You got to do some illegal shit to bridge the gap. Man, that's really what it comes down to. Facts, bro. That's the hack. Is what I'm saying. Listen, if I had no family man or whatever I was younger, if I'm not hunkered down man, I'd be in another country.
Speaker 1:I like seeing these guys some of the best media buyers I've seen. They're overseas or they may have lived. They may have grown up like you. They grew up in America and then boom, they traveled the world. They fell in love with one part of the world. Some people fell in love with Eastern Europe. They stayed there. Some people fell in love with Portugal. They're there. Some are in South America, central America.
Speaker 1:That's a hack man in that if you got your basic needs met, then you could really focus on your craft and you could provide those qualities, because I really think you're going to have a lot of people flush the fuck out. Happened in solar Guys that are putting up massive numbers in solar gone. We're still around. We're not putting up the numbers we were. We're still putting up decent numbers, but the point is that we're able to weather, the damn storm to Stick around. So if you can somehow have less pressure on yourself financially, less fucking stress, more peace of mind, man. So that's why I think the digital nomads or people like you that have been here for so long, it gives you an advantage at the end of the day because it lets you kind of breathe a little bit easier without having to worry about all this bullshit.
Speaker 3:And I know one last thing.
Speaker 3:I think that adding's something, an advantage.
Speaker 3:I didn't have that advantage at that time, but I would say something like someone that's younger, you know in their 20s, early 20s you know there's a lot of these communities out there and there's groups of people living together where they get to enjoy the benefits of youth.
Speaker 3:At the same time they're all working on their businesses together and I've seen a lot of people scale up in life just doing that, having that support, that support group people that are in the same industry. So it would make sense, if you're interested in being in a space looking at what these communities are whether these cities in Medellin, whether it's Thailand, whether it's Eastern Europe, south Africa there's people everywhere doing that Reach out to those people. Maybe some of those people mentor you and really, you know, if you have a little bit of money, where you have some ambition and you have some skills, really develop those skills in those areas, because you take advantage, you get the best of both worlds. You're living young, you get to enjoy yourself, you get to be around your peers that are going to help you out.
Speaker 1:So how would you find that community? Let's say, someone moved wherever, some farm, maybe they moved to Bogota or they moved to Mexico City. What's your advice for finding community?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think nowadays everything is social media right IG, you follow enough people. You get some people putting a video here and there and You're seeing out there. If you see someone doing ads for, let's just say, an agency or something like that, getting clients, they're probably living abroad. And when they're living abroad, you really follow them, you get part of their group, you talk to them and eventually you just find yourself. It's the same way. You know, I met you first.
Speaker 2:I saw you.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, but I first saw you like on a podcast with John I didn't even meet John.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's true.
Speaker 3:I forgot about that. Yeah, I saw you podcast with John and I didn't even know who you were. I was like oh, whatever. And then I met you in Affiliate Summit. So there's always ways of doing it. You just got to find a way of doing it. Reach out to those people, whether it's a DM, Look at different I want to say expat groups. Well, not the ones here, Maybe outside of here.
Speaker 1:I need those groups for the call center over here in Medellin. Man, You're going to connect me to those expat groups. I want to hire them, man. No, these aren't the ones to hire.
Speaker 3:I fucking will stay away from those guys. You don't want to do that. Trust me, trust me. You don't want that group.
Speaker 1:You give, nah, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:I hope you. But yeah, I think it's just a matter of once again. There's people putting videos out there, content out there. They're already living abroad and you see it in the background. They got mountains in the background. They're probably in the middle of the year, yeah, so I agree.
Speaker 1:And you made a good point. I forgot about that podcast man and I'd say that listening to these podcasts John's podcast marketing show, anything industry related and you learn more about that person, you get a glimpse in their life. Maybe out of every five people that are on there, maybe there's one that resonates with you and find their Instagram. Hit them up. You might find them at the show and then you talk. That's what happened with us, right? We saw each other at Affiliate Summit. You were from New York man, I was living there at the time right.
Speaker 1:And then, bro, all of a sudden, you're at Columbia Con, right, we're here. Every time I'm here, we see each other, right, I always make sure I got my go-to in every city. I'm here on this part.
Speaker 3:I'm going to hit this person up, so I think that's what it is. Yeah, half of this business is you got to meet people. You got to go out there. If you don't meet the right person, you're not going to get a good payout period. If you don't meet people, you're not going to generate a business. You need to do sales, yeah, and you got to have that very clear. So once you have that clear, you can't just be good at ads and writing copy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't work that. That's what it comes down to. That's awesome, man Bro. This was amazing. We really touched upon a lot. We got deep into the YouTube, we got deep into other platforms and I just think there's such a wealth of knowledge here, man, how can people find out more about you, right?
Speaker 3:I mean Raphael, it's all good, you can find out about me, raphael R-A-F-A-E-L, m-s-r, m-r-t-a, rafael M-R-T-A, at. That's my Instagram handle. Or you can find me, rafael Moret, on LinkedIn. Yeah, just connect with me there. I'm starting an email list, so I have the link, probably on my Instagram, maybe some other profiles. What are you going?
Speaker 1:to talk about. You're going to have tips on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about YouTube.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start talking about YouTube, youtube ads, okay, but I want people really to not, you know, really appreciate Google in general. I always like doing experiments. I've tested different things. I've heard a lot of theories out there and I've tested them and I'm like I don out there, I'm the guy pressing the buttons, so I want to talk about those type of things and if people want to hear that content, you know you sign up to the email list and get on board.
Speaker 1:Well, I say success leaves clues. Super success, we're doing this a long time. You got the fucking sauce. Subscribe to his email, put yourself in an email list. I'm going to do it. I'm going to have my team do it as well. I know that We'll definitely do it. Man Got you in my Columbia Con too. He'll be there as well. We're thinking January 7th, 8th and 9th around that time period.
Speaker 3:Sounds good.
Speaker 1:We're bringing the.
Speaker 3:New Year with a fucking bang baby.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, bro you got some guado, though, right, guado, all that shit, you got it all, man. All right, good stuff. Man, great having you you.