In our VIP Case Study series, we bring you unique marketing insights and ideas from successful entrepreneurs who are multi-millionaires in various industries and niches. Our goal is to provide you with unique ideas and perspectives that can help you scale your business fast.
Today, we feature Héctor Rodríguez Curbelo, a serial entrepreneur who has built successful companies in multiple Spanish-speaking countries.
We asked Héctor a series of questions, and in the sections below, we will share his insightful responses to each of our questions.
Héctor’s journey is intriguing, packed with golden nuggets and insights that you can use to scale your business to the next level.
Enjoy Héctor’s story and insights (and feel free to imagine him responding to each question with his elegant Spanish accent).
– Team Vavoza
What marketing strategies took you to a six-figure annual income as an entrepreneur?
My life as an entrepreneur started in an interesting field, which is the fashion industry.
I tried some different business models in the past, but my first successful business was a modeling agency about 13 years ago. We had about 120 models in our agency here in Uruguay and Argentina.
How did we scale it to six figures a year? At that time, we made about $12,000 – $15,000 a month with that business. It was a different world, man.
There was no marketing as we know it. It was, you know, TV advertisements, radio, pamphlets, word of mouth, stuff like that. That’s how it grew initially.
We did have a fan page and we did build an Instagram account back then. And we did have a Twitter account, but we focused mainly on those, let’s say, “old-school” formats of advertising.
Then, we scaled even more because we launched a fashion trends and news magazine to expand on the fashion industry business model, not only as an agency for models but also in the editorial industry.
We were following the same model, and we pushed even more into the digital content back then with the magazine, of course. But yeah, it was pretty old school.
– Héctor Rodríguez Curbelo
What marketing strategies made you a millionaire?
The company that made me reach millionaire status was Sé El Jefe (the word “Jefe” means “boss”). We launched Sé El Jefe in 2018, about a year after I met Vlad (the Founder of Vavoza).
In 2018, our company went viral, and the reason it became viral, and we went from having a few hundred students to thousands of new students, is that we did affiliate marketing within the system and focused on organic growth on social media.
I was literally doing about 1-hour long Live videos on Facebook on a daily basis. I did that for about four or five months, maybe six months of constant Lives.
I went from having three people watching to having 300 to 400 people watching my livestreams on Facebook, and that’s how we exploded.
So, we grew our audience primarily with Facebook Lives. Financially, our company grew immensely through email marketing, mainly on the back end.
– Héctor Rodríguez Curbelo
What strategies did you focus on in 2023, and what will you focus on in 2024?
Now, this is a particular one because, in 2023, my businesses and I focused exclusively on the development of the Wealth Club Coin project.
And even if we did post a few things on social media, it was not our intent to build up the project using social media.
The 100% biggest marketing tool we used in 2023 was elite networks with our VIP Ambassadors initiative.
In 2023, I focused on signing up the biggest people I could in different fields. We have, you know, royalty and world-champion athletes. And we do have some top network marketers, but it’s mainly elite individuals in different fields – actors, producers, singers, award-winning authors, speakers, etc.
Through our VIP Ambassadors, we did the core of the project’s marketing in 2023.
So, elite network marketing; elite networking, I will call it. I don’t know if “elite marketing” is an official term because it’s not widely used, but elite networking is what we did.
Now, 2024 is going to be a little bit different. Even if we keep pushing on the elite networking even more, this year, we’re going to start and double down on social media content creation and social media marketing.
We will also rely a lot on AI content – we are managing a few dozen AI tools and training our team to start building all that.
So, we will be advertising, but mainly focusing on organic social media engagement and marketing using AI tools. We will also continue doing email marketing on the back end, which is our preferred way of communication.
– Héctor Rodríguez Curbelo
What advice would you give to someone who is just getting started as an entrepreneur?
1) Advice For Complete Beginners
I’ve been asked this question many times in many interviews over the past few years, and the answer is always the same. Oftentimes, we believe in this nonsense that is not entirely true, “You need money to build a business.”
Money calls for money, money brings money – all of that is true – but you don’t need money to start a business, especially today.
My advice for anybody who wants to start a business is to focus on an online business, whatever the niche, whatever the industry.
Look for the right tools – you have multiple social media platforms, a phone, and countless AI tools that you can learn how to use for free (and many of which you can use for free) to push your business forward.
So yeah, that’s my biggest advice – just start. Do. Don’t think too much – just do.
2) Advice For Entrepreneurs With Cash Flow
The prior advice assumes that you’re a solopreneur pushing your business on your own because you don’t have money, right?
Well, my second advice will be, as soon as you have money, invest in your time. Meaning, start hiring people to do what you don’t need to do so you can focus on what’s important.
Don’t start buying new cars – remain broke. Keep investing in hiring a bigger and better team until your cash flow is way bigger than you can spend on hiring new people.
That’s how you scale your business; with people buying your time, and that’s what it’s all about.
It’s not about the actual number – making 10 grand, six/seven figures – it’s about how much you own of your time.
To be honest, it doesn’t make sense if you make eight figures a month working 17 hours a day and you don’t have time to enjoy with your kids or to freaking go to the gym or whatever it is you enjoy doing. It’s really pointless.
There are certain sacrifices to be made, I understand. Sometimes I don’t follow my own advice, especially with my latest project. Sometimes I put in 14-16 hours a day, but I own my own time – I spend a lot of time with my son, which I enjoy.
This is something that you can lose track of, so invest in people and in your own time as soon as you can – that will be my final advice.
– Héctor Rodríguez Curbelo
Closing Remarks
We hope you appreciated Héctor’s valuable insights just as much as we did. In closing, we will share some of our top takeaways from today’s edition.
When talking about how he initially grew his first successful company to a six-figure per year income, Héctor mentioned that they relied on various old-school forms of advertising.
But do you know what all of those ad formats have in common? They are all direct-response advertisements.
So, although we don’t recommend running TV and radio ads today, you can certainly run direct-response ads on YouTube and Facebook and implement the same concepts to grow to six or seven figures a year.
The purpose of a direct-response ad is simple – you want the right kind of people to see your ad, click it, and complete a very specific action, such as registering for a free webinar or filling out an application form on your site.
In other words, the objective is to capture targeted leads, which you can convert into buyers.
- By the way, if you run a local business, pamphlets and mailers can still work like a charm (just as they worked for Héctor 13 years ago). We still recommend some of our local clients use those old-school advertisements today because they can be efficient and effective.
Another major takeaway from Héctor’s experience is that there is no need to complicate your marketing in the early stages.
Héctor focused on just one advertising tactic to generate enough leads and customers to become a millionaire: doing consistent Facebook Lives.
Consistency is key! Héctor mentioned how he went from just 3 people watching his FB Lives to eventually hundreds of people tuning in daily – this can only happen when you consistently serve your audience with good value.
Finally, Héctor talked about what it takes to scale a business to the next level, and we totally agree with his advice on investing in your team and business instead of jumping into “living the life” too quickly.
It all comes down to how big you want to scale.
Héctor does business globally, so he prioritizes building a team, infrastructure, and strategic partnerships. This allows him to focus on what really matters to him, such as spending time with his family and living his best life.
We hope you derived a ton of value from this VIP Case Study, just as we did.
– Team Vavoza
