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What’s your backstory?
I was born in Dominican Republic, a third world country. I graduated from college as an engineer but I hated my 9-6 job. Then, I dreamt of becoming a professional soccer player, that’s how I began to use social media, primarily IG, as a means of exposure. It took me 4 to 5 years of mistakes and total bankruptcy before I took a $2K loan to buy a marketing course in February 2016. Then, in May 2016 I learned about Russell Brunson and Mitchell Harper and applied their business strategies on my IG account and boom.
That same year in September 13, 2016, I got my first paying client for $3.5k/month and business took off from there. Now we are currently generating over 6 figures a month.
Can you tell me the story of your prior successes, challenges, and major responsibilities?
When I decided to start learning about all this online world it was because I didn’t want to be stuck in a 9-6 work, because that is not living. Working really hard but making very little money. For me that’s not living, its surviving. I wanted to become a professional soccer player and I knew that staying in my country without being known by anyone would not cut it. SO I decided to make a Youtube channel and Instagram to show my skills, training, etc. for everyone to know my face. That’s how his first youtube channel and Instagram account came to exist (Elation Fitness and Elation football). Even though I had a very busy life, I had to be in college because that’s what my family wanted, so when I graduated I thought I could dedicate my time to social media, but instead I got a job. 8 hours a day, under the Caribbean sun, and I made less that $300-$400 a month BEFORE taxes and expenses.
Can you tell me about a time when you almost gave up, how you felt about that, and what you did instead of giving up?
So after a year of work I got an opportunity to leave to the USA. This was a very hard move for a lot of personal reasons, but I took the opportunity. Keep in mind it has already been 4.5 years since I created my youtube and Instagram account. Since my dream to become a professional football player I continue doing social media, but I still was unsuccessful. Time kept passing and even though this time I lived in the USA pursuing my passion, I felt stuck because I wasn’t moving forward as fast as I would have liked. So then my family decided I should go the safe route and get a Masters degree, because my football career wasn’t going anywhere so I got into an accelerated online program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
After six months into the program I saw this phrase: “successful people follow other successful people. It is the only way to shortcut your success” and I became obsessed with it. And after that I started seeing all of these entrepreneurs saying to model success and I realized I had to do that. I realized that the only way to shortcut my success, was to replicate it, to follow it, to model it, to get a map from where I was to where I wanted to go. That is when I decided to take a loan of $2,000 and get an marketing course to teach me about this social media crap.
What happened after that was extraordinary…
At the time I bought it (beginning of March of 2016), I had about 1k followers on Instagram (on my football page, because remember, my goal is still to go pro). I then started doing the follow/unfollow and started growing. I was the happiest guy in the whole world!! I grew to around 15k-20k by May of that same year, and then everything changed.
Instagram changed the algorithm and banned the app I was using to follow/unfollow…
This for me was the saddest news I could ever hear. I had invested $2000 on something that the main technique was teaching me to follow/unfollow in order to get followers. In my mind was like “if I get to 50k before the end of the year or maybe 100k, then I can get sponsorship” – there was no real monetization plan or strategy laid out for you. I was NEGATIVE $2k, no money and I had to figure this thing out no matter what. From there I started learning from Russell Brunson, Mitchel Harper, and they were saying model success, do the market research, funnel hack, etc.
I took these things, applied it on Instagram and everything took off extremely quickly to the point that today we generate over 6 figures a month, I’m the most sought out expert in my space and have over 4.5million followers across niche, industries and even languages, with also hundred of students across the world (so i know my system and process to grow and monetize Instagram accounts works 100% of the time).
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