"When I began this journey, I wish someone would’ve highlighted the importance of embracing remote work."
Meet Frank Sanchez, Founder of ELK Marketing.
He’s a seasoned digital marketer with a proven record of developing creative marketing strategies for his clients. Having successfully deployed initiatives with over 150+ clients in the commercial real estate and brokerage, financial services, and eCommerce brands.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Frank Sanchez: Frank Sanchez, Founder of ELK Marketing.
Seasoned digital marketer with a proven record of developing creative marketing strategies for his clients. Having successfully deployed initiatives with over 150+ clients in the commercial real estate and brokerage, financial services, and eCommerce brands.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, services, or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Frank Sanchez: What makes our company different from others is our approach to how we navigate the SEO world. I would first tell Warren Buffet that we are the #1 digital marketing team in the SEO space right now, and I would say these words confidently.
What differentiates us is our background in technology and development, allowing us to better understand the interaction between technology and our optimizations, and the supreme value we place on customer service. It is our number one priority to help our clients increase their revenue, and we have the skill, expertise, and track record to do so.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Frank Sanchez: The biggest and greatest achievement our team has celebrated in 2022 was hitting 2x our target revenue goal. This is something that, as a leader, I hold in great regard, not just because of what it means for the financial health of our business, but because of the work our team has achieved to make this possible.
Growing our team efficiently and effectively was the first domino to fall in our path to meeting this goal, and that includes hiring people who are self-motivated and value our shared goal of success. Meeting this goal ensures financial success today, financial hope for tomorrow, and continued financial security for our growing team.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Frank Sanchez: What I’ve found keeps employees happy is avoiding hiring bad employees. What I mean by that is focusing on hiring individuals who are both skilled and a culture fit for your business. Hire individuals who share the same entrepreneurial spirit as the founders of your company and this will provide a variety of benefits.
This will help to minimize the management layer in your company because you’ll be working with people who are self-starters and don’t require a high level of management. Additionally, reward winning work with lucrative bonuses and raises, and provide your employees with continuous opportunities to grow.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Frank Sanchez: When I began this journey, I wish someone would’ve highlighted the importance of embracing remote work. The COVID-19 pandemic, as we all know, forced many of us to embrace this model, and in doing so, I learned how efficient and effective it can be and has been for my team. I also wish I would’ve understood the value of a good accounting and bookkeeping team. Finding this for ELK Marketing has been incredibly valuable.
Next quarter, we are focusing more on our own digital marketing efforts, including outbound sales and improving the process of how we market our own brand.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Frank Sanchez: The book that has influenced me the most is Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow. This book gave me and my team a roadmap on how to effectively ELK Marketing into a business that can do exactly what the title claims, survive and thrive without my constant attention.
It’s helped us achieve this by building repeatable and scalable processes so that when I step away, everything continues to run smoothly. The most recent book I’ve read is 24 Assets: Create a Digital, Scalable, Valuable, and Fun Business That Will Thrive in a Fast-Changing World by Daniel Priestley, following the same principles.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Frank Sanchez: I have not written a book, but if I were to write one right now in my life, I’d write it about digital marketing as an industry and how we, as industry professionals and experts, need to be thinking differently about the KPIs that are most valuable and most important in our evolving digital world.
I strongly believe many of our industry leaders are following the wrong KPIs which is failing businesses and clients in their digital marketing efforts. It’s paramount to increase the revenue of our clients and we can only do this successfully if our metrics are where they need to be.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Frank Sanchez: For ELK Marketing, the current challenge right now (that we are navigating effectively) is maintaining culture at scale. We seek to hire people who fit our stringent ethos in order to continuously maintain a work environment that our employees thrive in, find fulfillment in, and enjoy being part of.
Culture, to us, is just as important as skill or expertise in your field. Without it, we cannot push each other to grow, foster the value of workplace diversity, and enable our employees to grow within their own roles as well as their personal experiences. Work should be a fulfilling place and this is achieved through creating and maintaining a culture you’re proud of. This will undoubtedly show through to your clients, too.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?.
Frank Sanchez: The hardest part and most underestimated piece of running a company, in my experience, is the realization that as a founder, there is no one to blame but yourself if you don’t succeed.
You have to take on and navigate every single challenge yourself, as there is no other backroom with folks who are going to sort out or solve your problems for you. This can be a scary and overwhelming thing to face, especially when you’re first starting out. On the flip side, it’s the most rewarding thing when you do find success because although success is never achieved alone, the first piece of the puzzle began with you.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Frank Sanchez: Something I’ve learned through the past few years as we have navigated unprecedented waters is to stay super lean as an organization. What I mean by this is to find what you’re good at it and become the best at it. Don’t over-extend yourself as this never leads to success, for you or for your clients.
It’s also important not to overhire or take on more work than your current team can handle. If you have to make hard decisions, make them, but never over-extend your team, your book of business, or your bank account. Lastly, loyalty is one of the most important things you can give to your team and your clients.
Treat your people with respect and have their back, and if you can support clients through the avenue of financial breaks, it will be a win-win situation for you both. Loyalty goes a long way.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Frank Sanchez: If I could pick any business superpower, it would be having the power to immediately speak with every decision-maker of every client we want to win. If I can get into a room with a decision maker of a client we’re looking to work with, and we both find that the fit is right, I know my business has what it takes to close deals.
The hardest part is getting in the door, so eliminating that obstacle would be incredible. I know our team sells itself and being able to showcase that would be a gift for me and my team.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Frank Sanchez: Success in the year 2023 would be marked by the same accomplishment elk Marketing made in 2022: doubling our revenue. This is the benchmark I put on myself to achieve continuous growth for our team. Meeting this goal means increasing the income of our team members, which in turn keeps our valuable people feeling valued.
A personal goal for 2023 would be to achieve a better work-life balance by empowering my team to do more without me. This way, I will have more time outside of the business to focus on my family, my personal interests, and other goals.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Frank Sanchez for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Frank Sanchez or his company, you can do it through his – Instagram
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