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.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Carlos Corredor discusses Condor Agency’s employee outsourcing business model
- The solutions Condor Agency provides for its partners and clients
- Incentives for growing a team exclusively in Latin America
- Operational processes to consider when building an employee base outside of the US
- Tips for outsourcing top talent for US-based companies
- Skills specific to Latin American talent
- Carlos expounds on the lessons he’s learned from operating an outsourcing staffing agency
In this episode…
US companies outsource talent, specifically in Latin America, because it’s cost-effective in terms of salary and operations. However, building an overseas employee base requires careful consideration of processes.
Outsourcing staffing expert Carlos Corredor advises that US-based companies should start with a small talent pool before expanding their teams. He explains that while taking advantage of different time zones can be beneficial, it is essential to schedule a specific time for all team members to meet virtually and address any concerns or questions. Carlos also recommends using communication and project management tools like Slack and ClickUp to enable collaboration and daily progress updates.
In this episode of the Tailwind Marketing Podcast, Kevin Dunn of HubSpot and the Agency Unfiltered podcast flips the script and interviews Carlos Corredor about outsourcing talent outside of the US. Carlos discusses Condor Agency’s employee outsourcing business model, the solutions Condor Agency offers its clients, and the operational processes to consider when building an employee base outside of the US.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
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 |
| 0:00 – 0:05 | Kevin: Hey Carlos, welcome to the Agency Unfiltered Podcast. How we doing? |
| 0:05 – 0:10 | Carlos: Hey Kevin, doing great man. Glad to be here, thanks for having me. |
| 0:10 – 0:18 | Kevin: Of course, happy to have you on. Now whereabouts in the world are you today? I know you might be in transit sometimes when I catch you, but where are you today? |
| 0:18 – 0:31 | Carlos: I’m in Miami now, which is where I live. But yeah, often, I mean soon in Mexico and Venezuela visiting the rest of the team and in Colorado in an event tomorrow, but for now, until today, in Miami. |
| 0:31 – 0:43 | Kevin: Yeah, at home. In Miami, as the wind, as the temperature, as it starts to get a little chilled up here in New England, Miami sounds pretty nice right around now. As does maybe Mexico too, yeah, so it looks like you’re hitting all the right spots at the right times. |
| 0:43 – 0:48 | Carlos: Yeah, today it went down to 70 and people are starting to complain, so. |
| 0:48 – 1:27 | Kevin: It’s all subjective, I guess. Well, Carlos, I love that you teed up that. You’re visiting some team members across the US and into Mexico. It actually segues really nicely into, I think, the conversation we’re hoping to have today. I think that goes to the team-building strategy or the way in which you’ve built out the employee base at Condor Agency, your agency. Maybe the best place to start, why don’t you just walk us through it? What is that model, what is that philosophy for building and growing Condor as an agency as you’ve built up your client base? Maybe walk us through how that may have evolved over time. Let’s start there. |
| 2:00 – 03:52 | Carlos: Yeah, so I started Condor with a good friend of mine. We’re the two founders and we started five years ago and we’re both from Latin America, from Venezuela. But I moved to Chicago now almost 12 years ago and I worked before starting Condor. I did a master’s there, I worked in a couple of other agencies and that really allowed me to understand the marketing world in corporate America, let’s say, from type of work the clients do to who is delivering those projects. And I always knew that there was a difference in terms of salaries, but I didn’t know it was that big. Not only salaries, the cost of the projects, how much you pay to employees, how much you pay to agencies, right? Yeah. So that’s really what, you know, got us thinking about building that business model of having the team outside of the US in particular in Latin America, where we grew up or we know how things work. We know where to find the people. We know the type of skills depending on the country or the university, et cetera. But, you know, focusing on clients that are in the US, perhaps not enterprise clients, but definitely medium-sized companies that are a little bit in a limbo because most agencies are going after enterprise clients, or at least well-established agencies are going after enterprise clients. So, you know, companies that have, I don’t know, 50 employees, companies that are making five, $10 million in revenue, up to $500 million in revenue, right? That’s a space that, you know, for them, it’s really cost prohibitive to work with a well regarded agency in the US. So that’s essentially how we started and how we’ve grown our business model in these five years. |
| 03:52 – 04:38 | Kevin: No, that’s great. And you mentioned the opportunity at the mid-market. I think you mentioned too a lot of agencies, especially a lot of Hubspot partners are seeking to go upmarket into the enterprise. I know that’s a topic that we cover on this podcast quite a bit. And so there seems to be an opportunity here at the mid market, which is, it sounds like where Condor may be operating. And then it sounds like too, I’m starting to see like the ratio of, you know, mid market businesses looking to pay US, you know, rates for agency services, but you have, you know, employees salaries and those that are delivering the work at a much cheaper cost. You can start to see that the profitability already taking shape. But Carlos, just to set the context, how big is Condor today? How many total employees? And then what’s the breakdown of US-based versus LATAM-based employees? |
| 04:38 – 06:43 | Carlos: Yep, so we’re up to 70-something people. Let’s say, let’s- Let’s run it up to 70, I think it’s 72 or 73 with the last couple of hires. So, and they are, all of them except me are in Latin America. So I’m the only one that is based in the US, you know. That’s a size in terms of the team. We, you know, because of the growth that we had in 2022, we made the Inc 5,000 list for the first time. Kevin: Congrats. Carlos: This year’s list, thank you. We were also number three, number 33 amongst agencies, right? Top 500 overall and number 33 amongst agencies. And yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because when we started, obviously, that was the business model from the start, but we always thought that, okay, at the beginning, you know, we’ll do, I mean, Antonio is the other founder, and me, we’ll do the account management and the sales, but eventually we’ll get somebody to do account management in the US. We thought that was a no-brainer. And then we said, you know, for what we’re going to pay to somebody in the US, you know, we can get, instead of somebody with a couple years of experience, we can get the head of sales of Leo Burnett Mexico to sell for us, right? So we continue, and we, you know, same thing for account management, right? So even those roles we filled in Latin America. I think those would definitely be the last ones that you would outsource or hire outside of the US, but in our case it has worked just because the way that we’re from there, right? And then lately, the roles that we do have here, or not roles, but yeah, the figures are, for example, consultants, business coaches, partners, right? Especially in the last year or two, we’ve done, you know, we’ve spent some time there and done a good amount of effort to build that network because that’s obviously impossible to recreate outside of the US, right? But other than that, everyone is in Latin America. |
| 06:43 – 07:03 | Kevin: Yeah, wow, that’s great. So it’s quite literally 99 point something percent of the employee, everything besides yourself. I didn’t know that. And now, does Condor, are you only looking to grow the team with full-time employees across Latin America, or do you have a bench of freelancers, contractors, like what are the various employment types that you tap? |
| 07:05 – 08:48 | Carlos: Yeah, That’s a great question. As an agency, it’s, interestingly enough, one of our, and this happened organically, one of our two main target audiences or segments are other marketing agencies, right? Where we don’t necessarily have more expertise in them, or we usually don’t have more expertise in them in their particular services, but we can help with staffing solutions and resource planning solutions. And that obviously enters into the decision of when should you hire an FTE versus a freelancer. For the services that we execute more often and where we have enough workload and predictability, we go for FTEs. from a cost standpoint is the best route to go long term as long as you have that predictability. But perhaps for services that we’re adding to our repertoire or it’s a one-off that we might know, we have a pool of freelancers, for example, video editors. That’s one that we are recently building and the demand for that is growing, right? But at the beginning, we started with one person part-time, and then as demand for that grows, then we turn that person into full-time, and perhaps add another part-time. So it depends a lot on the workload predictability, if we have the expertise or not, and the type of skill, essentially, and obviously the cost factor, but, you know. |
| 08:49 – 09:29 | Kevin: No, it makes sense, though, that the determining, it sounds like the key determining factor of whether you should seek to fill a position with a full-time employee or tap a contractor or freelancer is the workload predictability. Is this something that we’re hoping to offer or the type of deliverable, the type of engagement we want to consistently deliver to clients? If so, you know, obviously having somebody full-time makes a ton of sense for that. Carlos, you mentioned that you, some of your clients are other agencies looking for help or some guidance in this area? What are other mistakes or pitfalls that you find other partners or agencies bumping into when resource planning or, you know, thinking about, you know, team growth in their future? |
| 09:29 – 12:57 | Carlos: Yeah, I think that the first one, there are a few. I think the first one and most important one is not having the data to make those decisions, right? And starting with, usually they know the revenue numbers, but a lot of times when you get to gross margins, not only as a whole, but by service, by client, and ideally by deliverable, then it gets really messy, right? So if you don’t know which services are profitable, which clients are profitable, how can you increase those profits? Because you need to know when do you increase profits by decreasing the cost of your team, when do you increase it by charging more, when can you charge more if you are good enough already or if you have to invest in innovation to be better at a certain service or deliverable. So just having the gross margins is step one. After that, that will give you visibility into those kind of decisions that you need to make. Usually a very common mistake is, as we were talking before, hiring FTEs when not only that you don’t have enough predictability but you don’t even have the role defined or the responsibilities defined and the need for those deliverables, right? I’ve always been used to track my time. I think it’s amazing how some agencies being in the people business don’t require their employees to track their time. If you are an award-winning creative agency that you do Super Bowl commercials and you have the most creative people on earth, yeah, you’re not going to ask them to track their time. But usually when you do a lot of execution, when you have a back office team, cranking up work, SEO researches, landing pages, campaigns, you know, that’s a commodity essentially. Or a lot of that is a commodity and you should definitely be tracking that time. So yeah, measuring the productivity of your in-house team and having them to the same standards that when you hire somebody outside of your agency, that, you know, people are very used to negotiate, being tough negotiators, you know, with contracts, with renewals, demanding in status meetings. But for some reason, they don’t have the same standards or measurements in place or their in-house team and their in-house team tends to be at least three quarters of the cost, you know, of an agency tends to be their in-house team. So that’s a common mistake. And then, you know, we go into, for example, you know, should you go and outsource the work versus do it in-house, whether that’s with a freelancer because your workload is not quite there yet or the predictability, or you don’t have the expertise in which case then you need to vet and select the right partner because it’s not only a cost issue, it’s also you know you’re sending a deliverable in the name of your agency you better have the quality and accountability piece yeah 100%. So all of those decisions around resource planning he I don’t know it surprises me that there’s very little planning very little time put, and effort and data put behind that. That’s I think the main one. |
| 12:57 – 15:24 | Kevin: Well, it’s making sure you, it sounds like, to repeat it back, it sounds like making sure you have the right data with the right granular lens. Obviously, you mentioned the gross margins being a key piece. I think you mentioned time tracking and measuring the productivity of the team, right? So some of those things. You also mentioned that a pitfall you see is that some agencies are looking to maybe fill a role or to hire a full-time employee without having that role fully baked out or like fleshed out yet. What does that tend to look like? It sounds like a cart before the horse type scenario. When does that happen? |
| 15:24 | Carlos: Yeah, so for example, let’s say, you know, they have, because we do staffing and recruiting for agents a lot and they come and say, hey, you know, I need a full-time, for example, I need a full-time email marketer. Okay, let’s sit and discuss the details because there could be different types in terms of skills, backgrounds, industry expertise, et cetera. And they’re like, no, well, I’m having a sales pitch for this big project. And they’re going with a part of implementation and we’re definitely gonna need a bigger team than we have now, because right now we have nobody. I said, okay, and how are, and then when you start talking about the details, it’s like, well, it’s a project that is gonna last three months. That is gonna require not only one, but it’s gonna require three people to do it, right? So you’re gonna miss the mark. If you hire somebody full time, it’s gonna take the recruiter probably a week or two to start sending you resumes and qualified candidates, you’re gonna interview them for another week or two, they’re going to have to put probably their 15 weeks, you know, 15 day notice, right? So you’re talking about between a month best case scenario and more realistically a month and a half or two to have that person in your team. By that point, the project is already, you’re already gonna be late, right? And the person is gonna do the onboard, you know, it’s crazy, you know, that’s not the way that you solve that challenge, right? Whereas if you have a good partner that yeah, they’re gonna charge you a little bit more by the hour, but you’re gonna do the project on time successfully, you’re gonna make margins there, and you know once you have more predictability then you start moving some of that inhouse, but that’s an example that happens a lot. I mean I’m exaggerating maybe in this- Kevin: But yeah I understand the sentiment Carlos: But that’s usually what happens |
| 15:24 – 15:42 | Kevin: It sounds like there’s the importance of aligning like the scope and the requirements of a project and benchmarking that with either the talent pool you already have, venture freelancers you already have, or the potential need for a full-time employee. But knowing that the full-time employee, the vetting, the qualification, the ramp-up period, like yeah, there’s a whole other timing element that maybe some agencies that you’ve spoken with aren’t accounting for. |
| 15:42 – 15:58 | Carlos: Yeah. Well, for example, if you have a team of six email marketers, you just landed a new client that’s permanent, you want to get the team to seven, yeah, it makes sense. Your current team can absorb the workload for a month or two while you get that other person. So it depends on the situation. |
| 15:58 – 16:33 | Kevin: Yep, that makes sense. Now Carlos, you obviously are, for yourself, hiring LATAM-based employees. You’re also working with other agencies or other partners in helping them do the same. Obviously, we talked about the cost element, the salary differences. I can imagine that that makes, helps with the gross margins component that you alluded to. But what are the additional value adds to the business? Like why has it been such an important, you know, intention for Condor and for the agencies that you work with to scale in LATAM specifically? |
| 16:33 – 19:05 | Carlos: Yeah, I mean, one thing in LATAM is that, or at least the way that we do it in LATAM, because there are several other agencies that are offering it, we’re not going for only the cost savings. The cost savings will be there, right? But it’s like, if you’re going on a vacation, you know that going to, let’s say, Mexico, is gonna be cheaper than going to San Francisco, for example, right? Or Miami Beach, if you’re gonna go to the beach, right? That doesn’t mean you’re gonna go to the cheapest hotel in Mexico, right? You’re gonna go to a great place in Mexico that is still gonna be cheaper than a mediocre place in the US. So we do the same approach for talent. We go after the top talent in Latin America, right? Because we think that’s the way we do it for ourselves and that’s the way we recommend doing it for clients because obviously you want somebody that yeah, it’s gonna cost you less than in the US, but it’s gonna do great work. And great work, it includes several things. It includes that they need to speak great English, almost perfect essentially, right? So we go for people that do that. And most of them even studied college or a master’s in the US, right? There are a lot of those people in Latin America, so that’s one area. Expertise, so for example, in our analytics team, we don’t have marketing majors that know how to use Excel, right? We have data scientists and data engineers in our analytics team, and the same thing for our clients, right? So we’re going after really the best talent you can find. So I think that’s a difference. I think there are other, depending on the skills, and if really cost savings are the only thing you have in mind, there are definitely both other agencies in Latin America or even other countries that you can do it. You can go to the Philippines, you can go to India, right? And that’s a more mature industry in those places where when you talk strictly about cranking out work, you know, repetitively. But at the same time, I think AI is also impacting that type of skill. So that’s the main reason. I know we’re from there and I remember it’s just like we’re also big into sports and into baseball. It’s like, well, every major league team you see today, they bring the best players from Dominican Republic, Japan, Venezuela. So we try to do the same for marketing teams and agencies. |
| 19:05 – 19:45 | Kevin: Yeah, I love the baseball metaphor. Speaking to a Boston Red Sox fan, so I get it. I know how they develop, grow their farm system and develop their players. And to your point, it’s not only the cost savings, but there’s a balance between having a cost savings, but also seeking out and bringing in the top talent, right, that the region may have to offer, based on whatever you’re looking for, role or requirements, et cetera. What are the biggest considerations that teams, companies, agencies need to make when looking to grow a team outside of the US, whether it’s in LATAM or otherwise? How does that change their operations, their communications, their go-to-market? What are the biggest changes or considerations that they need to keep top of mind when growing a team? |
| 19:45 – 20:12 | Carlos: Yeah, well, I think the main one, I think COVID alleviated the first one a lot, which is just being in a different place. Five years ago, when I was in Chicago, that was before COVID, in the other age that I was, we’re trying to outsource some work and there was a lot of reluctancy, resistance to change, not because they were outside of the US, just because they were not sitting next to you. |
| 20:12 – 20:17 | Kevin: COVID was a forcing function, there’s just comfortability with distributed teams, right? Remote collaboration, 100%. |
| 20:17 – 22:03 | Carlos: Yeah, and that’s totally understandable. I think that again, COVID itself took care of that one, but obviously, it’s still important just as how you plan and communicate with somebody that’s in a different city in the US. Same thing with somebody that’s in a different region. Probably having a project management tool helps, whether that’s Asana, for example, we use ClickUp, Trello, whatever it is, that helps, Slack helps, as long as you don’t abuse it. I think also building a team in the same time zone helps a lot too, because you’re already dealing with somebody that is not with you, but then if that person is working from midnight to eight in the morning and you’re working when they’re sleeping, you know, yeah, you can delegate things, but it helps to have an overlap window where you can meet, where you can quickly ask a question, where you can bring them to another meeting that you already are. So, you know, hopefully, you know, or most of the time that helps too. And also, I think starting small is important, right? If you’ve never done it, start with a position, start with a part-time person, you know? Because you’re probably not gonna be the only one putting your hands in the fire, you know, for the decision, right? You’re probably selling this, right? So it’s much easier to sell the project and sell the outsourcing model when you do it successfully with a person or two, then, you know, believe me, their leaders and the owners or their bosses are gonna be the first ones to say, hey, can we do more of that? You know, they’re gonna be the one requesting as opposed to you pushing it too hard, you know? So I think starting small would be another. Another way. |
| 22:03 – 22:53 | Kevin: Piloting makes a ton of sense. Yeah, it sounds like, I think you mentioned like ClickUp and Asana, but leveraging systems, right, to help with, I think that’s just best practices for remote collaboration regardless. And then I think that’s a good tip too, just again, as you pilot it, as you test it out, seeking folks in a similar time zone, right? Kind of eases the transition for sure, makes it a little more effective, or like easier, you know, operation, right? Overlap of work, right? Carlos, what about like any cultural considerations or what does like the hiring process, the vetting process, interview process, right? The transition from an old role into a new role, like anything cultural or like just expectations wise for seeking employment that, you know, agencies would want to, you know, keep in mind? |
| 22:53 – 25:29 | Carlos: Yeah, I think the main one is, you know, when you see players and kids, you know, growing up in Latin America and in particular in the case of baseball, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, which are, let’s say, poorest countries compared to Japan, which is another baseball country, they would do everything to play in the major leagues, to be signed by a major league team, you know. They don’t, here you see, and understandably so, the kids when they are 17, 18, they’re deciding, should I go to college, you know, MLB teams are offering me this or that, you know, and they consider it, they doubt it, you know, because they have a lot of other options, right. So, kind of the same thing happens in the corporate world, right. When they have the opportunity to work for the best and the most powerful economy in the world, they take it and they appreciate it and they are really hungry. You know, and so that’s another thing. Whereas in the US, because everyone has different alternatives, you know, they have a little more negotiating power, right? They can afford to be a little more exclusive in how long they stay at a job, how much money they ask for, et cetera. So, however, having said that, you know, that people in Latin America, they tend to be really hungry. They all, it’s also a different culture and mentality in terms of their approach to work, and not only a work-life balance, but commitment to your company, you know, here in the US, again, you know, it’s a capitalist country, you know, Latin America is more on the socialist side. Even people that have the best education, just culturally how they grew up, their parents’ education, the country education, they can definitely be a little more cynical towards their employer, right? Or have different goals, right? And they don’t understand that if a company is doing great, you cannot do great, you cannot expect certain compensation if the company is not meeting their goals and vice versa, right? So that’s something that we definitely weed out during the interview process, right? We wanna make sure that you’re hungry, you wanna be part of this economy, you’re gonna appreciate it, and you are going to understand that you need to add value to the business and the business needs to do well, and everyone will do well and everyone will grow, right? So I just weed out that cultural aspect I think is important. |
| 25:29 – 26:03 | Kevin: Yep, no, it’s a helpful frame of reference. Thanks for sharing. Are there any, we talked about skills, we talked about top talent, you know, if I’m an agency, if I’m another HubSpot Solutions partner, I’m like, man, you know, we’ve been growing this piece of the business, the service offering, it’s time to start, you know, investing in it, bringing in some new employees, maybe we’ll start to look at the talent within LATAM. Are there any services or skills as it relates to the HubSpot platform or the services around it that aren’t quite a fit yet for the talent pool within LATAM? Does that make sense? |
| 26:03 – 28:39 | Carlos: Yeah, yeah. I think marketing in general, so for example, not going necessarily into HubSpot yet, but talking about marketing, I think LATAM is a great place in general. For example, development, people are used to outsourcing development to, or IT, for example, to India. Development to Eastern Europe, right? And perhaps cheap marketing labor to the Philippines. I would say, if I have to generalize, people are very used to doing that, right? I think LATAM is a great place for marketing in general. Now, when you go into the marketing channels, for example, if we consider Hopswoot to be, you could consider that to be on the development side or more on the marketing automation and email side. But I think LATAM definitely offers that alternative. For example, I’m a hound of universities and college grads and proximity to the US, Mexico, is a no brainer for that one. For the analytics portion, web analytics portion and analytics also, I think Argentina, although Argentina is going through a crisis right now, that you also need to watch out for that. You know, I think Latin America in general is somewhat unstable politically, but in particular, that’s okay, you know, as long as you’re aware of the risk, but Argentina today, it’s in a very tough place because of, again, currency issues, but yeah, I would say analytics and even some development in Argentina is good. I think Colombia is another emerging one that is good in terms of both size, because the population and talent availability and English speakers, I would say for us, but Colombia and Mexico make a lot of sense. For example, other smaller countries like Venezuela, where we’re from, that’s a great country to build somebody that is really raw, right out of school that they haven’t worked at either an agency or a marketing department, but then you train the person, right? We have, by being all partners of Hustler, we have definitely solid trainings in place to grab somebody fresh out of college and get them up to speed really quick. And as long as they’re supervised by the right person, you can also find value there. But again, it’s more like potential and you need to train that person. |
| 28:40 – 29:19 | Kevin: That’s like existing skill and expertise versus, yeah, finding somebody that’s gonna come in with the hunger that you’ll be able to coach and develop, right, to build. Carlos: Yeah, exactly. Yep. So it sounds like Colombia, Mexico, you mentioned, I think Argentina as well, Venezuela. Now, outside of reaching out to Condor Agency, right, if this was something that I wanted to, you know, start for my own business, where and how do I get started? So we’ve identified, you know, hey, these are the types of skills that we should be hiring for here, the countries that the top talent might be located, like where and how do I get started? Where do I go find the talent? Where do I go, you know, meet them where they’re at, so to speak. |
| 29:20 – 31:04 | Carlos: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s, you probably have to either recruit that, I mean, Upwork is always an option, but the thing with Upwork is that you don’t, it’s always a freelancer mode. You’re not creating necessarily a solid partner there that can help you. Ideally, you know, because it’s not only finding the person, it’s building a team, making sure you’re protected. Either, does it make sense for you to incorporate in another country, right? If you only have a couple of people, probably not. You know, you can find a partner that does that. But ideally, it’s the same partner that helps you with, you know, the defining the type But ideally, it’s the same partner that helps you with, you know, the defining the type of skill that you want and the figure that you want in terms of permanent versus temporary. And then that can find you both alternatives and then they can stack them on their payroll in case they’re not incorporated. So ideally it’s a one size fits all solution, it’s very common that going back to the example of tourists when they visit Mexico, they go back and say obviously everybody takes a piece, they guy at the airport, the taxi jumps at you at the airport and takes a piece, then the guy at the restaurant takes a piece and ultimately you didn’t save money, whereas if you go with one person that takes you the whole experience and you’re clear of the costs from the start and then both again recruiting or even if you have to find an office space, staffing the person, if you need to let the person go, that you’re covered from a legal standpoint, all of those things, ideally you should, again, do it under one partner that has expertise and that offers you a good value and a good time for that. |
| 31:04 – 31:45 | Kevin: Yeah so it’s been a – first off it sounds like to really be able to do it effectively and succesfully you want to find some sort of like a staffing partner, someone that has the expertise, right, in hiring in these areas, in these regions. And there’s value in working with a singular staffing partner that can full, you know, across the board from recruiting to filling to helping with some of the legal, compliancy, right, employment paperwork. So there’s benefit there. But to your point, this was interesting. So remind me, what’s the decision-making criteria for whether or not I should seek to be incorporated in that country or not? Is it the size of employee, like the quantity of employees I’d be hoping to hire in that country? |
| 31:45 – 32:43 | Carlos: Yes, exactly. Because there are some legal costs, not only legal costs up front or one time, let’s say, but also, you know, administrative costs. You need to do accounting and taxes in a different country, right? So somebody needs to do that, right? So if you only have one or two people, even if they’re full-time, but if they’re only a couple or let’s say up to five people outside rule of thumb, up to five, then it makes sense to just pay somebody to have them on their payroll. Whereas if now you’re up to 10, you’re gonna continue to be in that country, you like it a lot, you’re constantly recruiting there, then that might be a good time to say, okay, why don’t I incorporate here so I can do it on my own and probably ultimately save more money that I’m spending, especially in terms of to be able to help people on my payroll. |
| 32:44 – 33:04 | Kevin: Right, and so it sounds like the tipping point is like, all right, for one to two, maybe up to five. But as you go beyond that, that’s kind of tipping the scale towards like, yeah, maybe you should seek out, right? And does the partner that you have, somebody like Condor or otherwise, the staff, do they assist with and offer guidance for agencies to get incorporated into the countries that they’d want to be incorporated in? |
| 33:04 – 34:37 | Carlos: Yeah, definitely. And that’s also, keep in mind, that’s for, let’s say, what we call unmanaged resources, right? Or full-time resources that you are managing and they work full-time for you. But in some instances, you might be better off partnering with somebody that manages that for you. Or what we call white-label services, right? Where you need, you’re looking to save a little bit of money, perhaps you don’t have the expertise, or even if you have the expertise, you like somebody to, again, save you management time, essentially, and giving you deliverables perfectly. Obviously, if we hire a full-time person, we or any partner, if they hire a full-time person for you, you’re gonna manage them, right? If they make mistakes, if they deliver something that is not client-facing, then it’s gonna be on you to, again, train that person, put them on a performance improvement, whatever it might be. Whereas if you put somebody, a lot of times we see that it’s valuable to put an account manager or a project manager that is seasoned with the channel, with US clients, and then you can scale because you can build a team, not only one, two, but potentially five people under that person, right? And it’s, let’s say, I don’t know, we’ve seen that model be really valuable. And in that case, you know, perhaps you wanna do it via the agency partner that you do it with, and you don’t even have to be incorporated for that. It’s just a transaction with an agency. |
| 34:37 – 35:12 | Kevin: So there’s almost like the fourth option on this menu where it’s like, well, you can either hire a full-time employee, you can look to contractors, you can find freelance. Then there’s also this fourth option, which is you can outsource or bring in a partner who may have a team that’s primarily built in one of these LATAM countries, and then they can either white label these services. But again, there’s a cost savings for your agency, again, because of all the reasons we mentioned about the talent within LATAM. So there’s that fourth option, the white label or outsource component to another agency. Yeah |
| 35:12 – 35:38 | Carlos: Yeah, and the benefit of both the white labeling and the let’s say a part-time where that’s freelancers or what we call shared resource is that it’s immediate, right, you need to plan, you’re gonna hire a freelancer and start the search from zero is gonna take you a couple of weeks to have that person in. Whereas if you already know a team, and you know you can tap into that team essentially on demand, literally overnight, that’s really valuable. |
| 35:38 – 36:04 | Kevin: That makes sense. Carlos, what have been, obviously you mentioned growing a team up to 72, 75, what have been the biggest lessons learned, right, as you’ve grown Condor, a client base that’s US-based, an employee base that’s LATAM-based, what are the biggest lessons learned along the way? Is there anything that you learned, or any pitfalls that you had to navigate that listeners today can benefit from? |
| 36:04 – 37:50 | Carlos: Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve always been data-driven, but even us, which I think that’s actually I think that’s one of our strengths, right? How data-driven we are. Even ourselves, we’ve made some mistakes in terms of resource planning that again, starts with the financial planning, you know, from the start by not having that very clear, not only goals, but also, you know, margins by team, by client, how, cause we’ve been growing quarter over, the only quarter that we didn’t grow, it was Q2 of 2020 when COVID hit, but around that, you know, we’ve always grown quarter over quarter. So it’s like we take it for granted, right? And then last year, even though we still had a better year than 2021, we overestimated how much we’re gonna grow and ended up hiring more people, right? Also, I think because we hired people in Latin America, we know we have a little more leeway because salaries are, let’s say, a third of what they’re in the US. So maybe we abused that in the past, so that’s another learning. But I think, again, you can never be too meticulous with your financial planning and with your gross margin reports. And then the other one is, I’m not gonna say that we, I don’t think the problem was hiring the people, the extra people. I think the problem was not calculating what they were gonna do and making sure that we have demand for those, not taking the time to establish their role and responsibilities. Even a rough estimate of how much were they gonna spend on each area, on each channel, on each client. I think those are two big ones. |
| 37:50 – 38:24 | Kevin: Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. It goes back to the pieces you talked about, just, yeah, what are the biggest mistakes agencies make when trying to properly resource plan. It sounds like, you know, understanding the scope of work, the demand that would warrant, right, additional headcount for your team. Makes sense. And sorry, you mentioned this, I guess we didn’t cover it explicitly, but you just mentioned this. Is the shorthand, kind of the back of the napkin math, the salary differences for somebody at the same level of responsibility is one third, if they were in Latam versus, you know, key markets in the US? |
| 38:24 – 39:06 | Carlos: Correct. Rule of thumb. Again, and you have to be really careful with that because you can go lower, but then you’re going to start sacrificing quality, right? But I’m talking about 100% fluent in English with the same expertise in terms of technologies, type of clients, industries, right? I would say a third, including, you have to count recruiting costs in the US and recruiting costs in the, like, all things being equal, I would say a third. And again, I recommend half, but then having a better person, right? You know what I’m saying? |
| 39:08 – 39:30 | Kevin: Well, that’s exactly, that’s if all things are the same, but there’s an opportunity to still experience some cost savings but to go up on level of skill, expertise, etcetera. 100% Kevin: Yep. Carlos, as we come up on time, I do want to just squeeze in one last question here. We wrap every episode with the same question. What’s the strangest part of agency life? |
| 39:54 – 41:04 | Carlos: I think one that is just happening now is that, I mean, it’s a people business, but then after COVID, everyone is working remotely. And I, for example, speaking personally, I, at one point, I have been talking, I have been working every day with a team that I had never met in person, right? So because again, COVID was almost, you know, two years between, you know, the quarantine and then the travel bans and everything. So that was amazing, you know, going in person and spending time having a beer or even like working on a deep work session with somebody that, you know, I hadn’t met for two years. That’s weird. I think, again, agencies that that’s happening a lot. I mean, the AI man, AI today is crazy. We try to be on top of it, we’re prioritizing, incorporating everywhere, but I’m amazed. I’m amazed, I don’t know if it’s surprising, if it’s strange, but it’s definitely all of the above and I think it fits into your question as well. |
| 41:04 – 41:28 | Kevin: It’s so hard, you gave me the bait, it’s so hard whenever the door cracks open for AI, it’s so hard not to like, all right, well, let’s go for another 40 minutes. But what’s like just while we’re on it, what has been your favorite use of generative AI or AI? Where has it been plugged into in your processes? Like where have you seen the biggest return or most impact or value like what’s really working for you guys with AI today? |
| 41:28 – 43:12 | Carlos: Yeah. I mean, we’re using it across channels, right? From, I don’t know, from Mid Journey to help with the creative process, to Jasper, to help with copywriting, for example. And I can say the same thing for marketing automation, paid media, etcetera. But one area that, maybe that’s because the one that I’m more involved in, but that has blown my mind, is in terms of positioning your services and understanding your audience. It’s amazing how the prompt changes the whole answer, especially with the Chat GPT 4.0 and now that it has data up until today, essentially when you use the four-point version with Bing, you know. For example, we have the positioning for our agencies in one PDF, right, and it’s condensed. I think some of them, it gives you a limit of 50 pages or whatever, but it’s, I mean, 50 pages at a letter that is number six, you know, can fit a lot of text there, right? So, you know, but I don’t know, we have a couple of pages for our positioning and our differentiators and our services. And then, you know, if you combine ChatGPT with a tool like Phantom Buster, where you can scrape, you know, LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and the audiences and their positions and what they’re describing that their role is in their bio, then, you know, magic starts to happen in terms of, okay, you know, what, if I would have to send one message to this person, what would I send? Give me five examples. |
| 43:12 – 43:14 | Kevin: Deeply personalized, deeply contextual, 100%. |
| 43:14 – 43:47 | Carlos: Yes, and be more creative. For example, we follow Josh Brown in sales, right? No, are you familiar with Josh Brown? Yes. okay. What would he say? That changes the thing. So I’ve been playing around with those combinations a lot and it’s unbelievable. Something that would take us six months and I would be okay with the results. Now we can do it in a week and I’m thrilled in the terms of creativity, the points that it has, how it goes straight to the problems that the audience has. I mean, it’s amazing. |
| 43:47 – 44:41 | Kevin: Yeah, it’s deeply powerful. Yeah, to your point, it can move so fast. The time savings are immense, but then to your point, it’s probably working better than if you or I tried to put something like that together, that type of campaign outreach, you know. Well, Carlos, thanks for indulging me. I snuck in an AI question there. But as we come up on time, we’ve discussed a lot, right? Obviously, Condor has grown upwards of 72, 75 employees. Everyone other than yourself has been hired out of LATAM, and there’s a number of value adds and meaningful impacts that that has had on the business, operationally, gross margins, a number of different things. And then, you know, there’s an opportunity for others to think about growing their team in the same way. There’s some guidance you offered about resource planning and how to get started and where to get started. So anyways, so much to pull from here, man. Thanks for coming on the podcast and for sharing your story and your insights. |
| 44:41 – 44:58 | Carlos: On the contrary man. Thank you guys for having us. Thank you, Kevin, man. Glad to be here. Thank you for the opportunity and talk soon, man. And anyone that, again, wants to reach out, definitely feel free to do it at our website. It’s condoragency.com. Thank you so much. |
| 44:58 – 45:06 | Kevin: Awesome. Well, you heard the man. You know where to find him if you’re interested in learning more. You know where to find him if you’re interested in learning more. Otherwise, this has been another episode of Agency Unfiltered. |
