Carlos Corredor is the Co-founder and CEO of Condor Agency, an ROI-driven digital marketing firm. He has 10 years of experience working in digital strategy and analytics and measuring the impact of marketing initiatives on business outcomes. Before Condor, Carlos was the Senior Manager of Digital Marketing and Analytics at Rise Interactive.
Antonio Santana is the Co-founder and President of Condor Agency, which also functions as a staffing agency connecting US businesses with qualified, English-speaking Latin American talent. As a sports entrepreneur, he is also the Founder and Director of Wahoo, a platform that helps MLB teams find optimal prospects in the international market.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What is the Inc. 5000 list, and how has the accomplishment influenced Carlos Corredor and Antonio Santana?
- How Condor’s staffing agency differentiates itself from other remote staffing companies
- Building a company culture to recruit and retain top-tier talent
In this episode…
Condor Agency owners Carlos Corredor and Antonio Santana have achieved many accolades, including landing on the Inc. 5000 list. The two seasoned marketers and recruiters attribute their success to a combination of factors, including their experience, team of talented employees, and company culture.
Carlos explains how his experience living in the US and working in corporate America gave him a unique perspective that has helped him succeed in business. Antonio adds that the agency’s success is due to its first-rate employees’ hard work and dedication. Despite their achievements, they’re committed to growing the agency and providing their clients with the best possible service.
In this episode of the Tailwind Marketing Podcast, Chad Franzen of Rise25 once again interviews hosts Carlos Corredor, Co-founder and CEO of the Condor Agency, and Antonio Santana, Co-founder and President of the Condor Agency, about the firm’s impressive success. The two address being named an Inc. 5000 company, how it differentiates itself from other staffing agencies, and how company culture contributes to success and growth.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Carlos Corredor on LinkedIn
- Antonio Santana on LinkedIn
- Condor Agency
- Chad Franzen on LinkedIn
- Rise25
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Condor Marketing & Staffing.
Condor is an ROI-driven digital marketing agency built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.
Our expert team helps clients identify and execute initiatives focused on business growth. We aim to democratize digital marketing with proven strategies and measurements that guarantee a return on investment by leveraging innovative technologies and the support of our Latin American office.
We provide strategic digital marketing advice, website development, content generation, SEO, performance marketing, social media marketing, CRM and email automation, web analytics and BI reporting, video production, and staffing services.
To learn more about our execution of ROI-focused marketing, reach out to us at CondorAgency.com or email us at support@condoragency.com.
Episode Transcript
Transcript
| Time block | Transcript |
| 0:23 – 0:26 | Chad Franzen: Hey guys, great to see you. How are you guys doing today? |
| 0:26 – 0:31 | Carlos: Hey, Chad. Good to have you again. Antonio: Hello, Chad. How are you? |
| 0:33 – 0:45 | Chad: In our previous episode, you mentioned that you are now Inc. 5000. I’m just a little bit about, a little bit familiar with that. Can you tell me what that means and what it means to you? |
| 0:45 – 02:41 | Carlos: Yeah, so the Inc. 5000 is a list that is published every year. And just as,
you know, Forbes recognizes the richest people in the world, and the Fortune 1000 recognizes the
biggest companies in the world, Inc. 5000 recognizes the companies, the private companies in the U.S
with the fastest growth. And then, for the first time, given our revenue in 2022, we made the 2023 list. so for us it’s – we’re really proud of that accomplishment. in terms of what it means, there’s – obviously there’s a validation point. for those that are not familiar with our agency, we’re based in Latin America, all of our team is in Latin America, and we always compare both our industry and ourselves with sports and in particular with baseball. in Venezuela, in particular, baseball players – they want to play in the Major Leagues, and you see how they play for the Yankees, the Red Socks, and Miguel Cabrera, for example, he’s from Venezuela. A lot of kids admire him. and everybody wants to play in the Major Leagues but it is really hard to get there, so for us, being part of that list, which is, again, for U.S based companies, established in the U.S. for us, that’s like making it to the big leagues. so, it’s something that not only Antonio and myself but we know the rest of the team, it means a lot to them as well, it’s like a validation of not only our effort but the fact that you can really find great talent in our countries. So I think that is the most important part of it. |
| 02:42 – 04:18 | Antonio: Yeah, I mean, of course, we feel very proud. it’s a validation of five or
six years of hard work, and the team is very proud too. we did like a small gathering in the
offices, and they were really excited to know and to understand in what position in the rank we
were. and when we heard the number, it was like everyone was so excited, like hugging each other,
and it’s something that it makes you feel very proud with the team, with the
company. And also is something they deserve, the team, because, in Venezuela, I don’t think there’s any company that is in the Inc. 5000 list, it is impossible. and in Mexico, maybe there are a few. so the people in Condor, for them it’s something to feel very proud of, to basically brag about it. So, I would say that’s really important for us right now in the present and for the future, to keep doing and keep in that list, and basically doing things that are important for us. |
| 04:19 – 04:34 | Chad: Tell me, what do you think are the key contributing factors that helped you get to this point? Obviously, you guys are very good at marketing, you know analytics. can you go into a little bit more depth at the facts that helped you get to the Inc. 5000? |
| 04:35 – 05:14 | Carlos: Yeah, the team, and being able to count and depend on that team, initially in Venezuela, then in Mexico, and now a couple folks in the rest of Latin America, but for us it was cost-prohibitive to hire someone in the U.S, so at the beginning that helped us a lot. we wouldn’t have been able to build even a small team in the U.S. also we’re from there, obviously we knew people there, at the beginning it is not easy, you have to leverage your network. |
| 05:15 – 06:06 | Antonio: Sorry to interrupt there, actually, when we were in the beginnings we said
like “okay, let’s hire a lot of folks in Latin America, but let’s keep, for example, in the future
the Account Managers, and the sales people in the U.S” because that’s going to be strategic for
us. But during the process, we understood and identified that we didn’t need that, the talent was so good, the people were so great, that we actually don’t need people in the U.S. I mean, all of our Account Managers and sales people are also in Latin America, so the talent was also like a discovery during that process. |
| 06:08 – 08:09 | Carlos: I think it’s important, there’s obviously other agencies that are outside
the U.S, but they don’t have the experience in the U.S. so having that experience, I worked in
Chicago in the best agencies there for six years, so I think that combination is important. people
are used to work with foreign agencies, there’s a lot of them in Asia, in India, in the Phillipines,
but not counting with that experience of understanding really corporate America, I think that’s a
winning vision. The business model in the team in Latin America, but the experience in Corporate
America was very important. The understanding of those clients was huge, and also talking a little about where we come from, we don’t come from a traditional advertising background, we were entrepreneurs and we ended up being in Marketing just because that’s a need to grow our businesses, so I think that makes us very different and then our analytics, and our data-driven approach to help our businesses and help our clients has been really important. we have a gross-margin report to understand the services. the state of our analytics resembles more of one of an agency of a thousand people and a hundred-million dollar revenue than a start-up agency like we were. and without that, it would have been impossible to grow, so those financial reports, productivity reports, hour-tracking system, how we tie it all up together and how we do the same thing for our clients, obviously focused on their marketing efforts, has been another factor that has been crucial. |
| 08:09 – 08:28 | Chad: What about the – what about the culture? I’ve talked to other agencies and obviously, a big concern of theirs, especially in the 21st century, young people who are talented, are looking for the next opportunity within six months of starting a job. how have you guys been able to overcome that? |
| 08:28 – 12:23 | Antonio: I think that the culture is also a key factor for us. when we started
Condor we defined very well our culture positioning, the values, the mission, vision, and
everything. and when we hire people, we basically try to bring them into the company with the same
set of values that we have in the company, and we do interviewing and testing to identify if they’re
aligned with our set of values, so that’s really important, that’s why recruiting is so important
for us. I mean, at the beginning we weren’t that good recruiting people, we actually hired firms and
agencies to do that for us, but it was also a pain for us, and we decided that we needed to be
really good at recruiting, so we built our own system, our own tests, our own interviews and we have
reports to identify the best interviews, how many interviews are we doing, how many qualified
candidates we have, how many previous candidates we have, because we are relying on Latinamerican
talent, and we set that we needed to identify the best talent out there, so that’s what our
recruiting team is doing, finding out the best people, with solid english out there, to put them in
front of our clients in the U.S. And right now, for example, in terms of the culture, we also rely a lot in our talent, so we provide a really good set of benefits, like for example we have easy mondays, summer fridays, we provide wellness and nutrition, we give access to gyms, psychologists and new things that are really focused on the new generations, the Gen Z, they want those type of benefits, benefits that are alligned with the things they are interested in. so basically that’s what we are doing, we give of course a hybrid model it’s really important right now, maybe we came from a more traditional background and I love to go to the office, but people like working from home so you need to give them that, so retention for us was really a key. initially, we were really struggling with retention, and right now our retention is around 90% and that’s why I think retention is really important for us, we have people in our offices that have been with us for the past four and five years, and those are the ones getting in touch with the clients. And the Clients want people that are there, they don’t want changes, they want to communicate with the same person. so that’s why we rely on retention and on the people. and it has been very positive for us. |
| 12:24 – 13:14 | Carlos: Yeah, I think a good compensation never hurts. but it is definitely, that’s
the easy part as long as you can do it, and the hard part is the rest and it’s really as important
as the compensation. Also, the analytics, going back to it, yeah they can work from home because we have a good tracking system, a good management system to make sure that they are being productive. and we know how to measure that without micromanaging, and we’ve also made a great effort on working on their career path and how to put that Individual lane for them to develop their skills and know what they need to work on and improve to get to the next level, so I think it’s a combination of all of that. |
| 13:18 – 14:59 | Antonio: Also the clients that, they did help us a lot, like roasting us. actually,
when we started, we started with one client, and it was a company that Carlos’ sister, she works
there, too, and we started really small, like a 2000 a month contract, and right now they are our
biggest client. and that’s really important for us, the trusting that the clients put on us and
basically growing that relationship from being really small to now having with them like a 10 or 12
people team for them, doing different things, we’re their agency of record, and that basically has
been with the majority of our clients, we started small and we grew the relationship with
them. And they are also open-minded, they trusted this model that we are providing, that having a presence in Latin America, and talent in Latin America is really good, and they trusted that process and thay system, and they are in the rewards of that, and of course for us the clients have been really important in this process. |
| 14:59 – 15:06 | Chad: Last question for you, you mentioned that you started with one client, you had kind of a connection to that client, how did you get your second client and what did that mean to you? |
| 15:06 – 16:43 | Carlos: I think the second client if I remember it was a personal connection of
mine in Chicago, he started as an entrepreneur and now his company is really successful, a couple
rounds of funding, well-known in the e-commerce space called Shopping-Gives, it’s a plug-in for
e-commerce stores and brands to flawlessly include the possibility to donate to their costumers, so
again I think that, and with the personal network, that translated not only to the network of
Antonio and myself but then really to the work that we were doing, and the referrals came from
people that maybe switched jobs, and then they were calling us. But that doesn’t – it’s not so much of our network, is more about the team, the work that the team did. And lately, as we want to accelerate the growth and take it to the next level, we definitely started owning on the actual what we do: paid media, generating content, both inbound and outbound and marketing automation. those things, especially in the last two years, we also have gotten little clients from that. but that’s how it has evolved since the beginning and since our first couple of clients. |
| 16:43 – 17:00 | Chad: Okay, hey I – Carlos and Antonio it’s been great to talk to you guys today, I loved hearing your stories, incredible stories of success incredible lessons for other people for success as well. |
