Do you want to have an impact on the world and do something to better it? Reynaldo Santana helps us understand the complicated maze of the Non-Profit Google Adword program and how he helps non-profits to better themselves through these online tools.
Reynaldo is a former tech executive with 10+ years of experience working from corporate to small-medium businesses, to non-profits and start-ups. Managing a budget of 30MM and teams worldwide. Reynaldo is a serial entrepreneur, investor, speaker, philanthropist, and author on a mission to impact 1 Billion lives by using what he has learned along his journey.
Transcript
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce today I have for Reynaldo Santana. He is an entrepreneur and the founder of Impact Annex. Reynaldo, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you do in your day-to-day life and maybe one of your passions.
Thank you so much, Brent, for having me here today and everyone for listening today.
Happy to so who is Reynaldo Santana? I am still one who was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts I’m a serial entrepreneur. Investor, I’m an author. I’m a motivational speaker for young people. I am second generation here in the U S my parents came from the Dominican Republic.
So are we going to that I do is new and the first one in my family is pretty cool. It’s like a journey or an adventure on everything that I do in life. So it’s pretty awesome. But aside from that my background 12 years working in the tech fields I used to live in Mexico, San Francisco, California.
I did some time in Florida and Columbia, Venezuela. So I’ve been everywhere as well. One thing that I also like to do and to share with everyone is that I’ve been playing the trumpet since the age of seven. So I’m a musician as a hobby and also. So I do love music a lot, and I love to travel, like to eat food.
You can consider me as a chubby guy. And you see me in the street, not that big, I’m a chubby guy, but if you read, come to Massachusetts, hit me up, happy to grab some sort of food or
drink. All right. Yeah. Trumpet. I played trumpet in junior high and I still have my trumpet.
I was thinking about putting up on the wall behind me and I’ve played piano all my life. So two things had common already. The Minnesota twins have a large following in the Dominican Republic for their baseball players. And I think we have what towns for the wolves that is from there.
His family’s from Dominican Republic anyways. So true. I’ve been there a couple times. Done some work there anyways. So let’s get talking about Impact Annex. What is it, what do you do?
Within these past 12 years, I’ve had the opportunity to be a business owner myself and work for a few startups started my owner startup as well, worked for corporate small medium businesses.
So had a chance to really understand the different types of pain points that a different size or organization can have and understand how sales and marketing works as well. And actually wrote a book on 2016, it’s on Amazon, on catching up to millennials because technology doesn’t wait for anyone.
It keeps evolving over and over. And we have to keep adapting as business owners. That’s not easy, especially if you’re a different generation. So things are moving very rapidly. So in that book, I it’s explaining. The history of marketing sales and how that’s changed into this thing called inbound marketing which, people today are now creating a lot more content to be found and to build that trustworthiness with the consumers, because we can agree that consumers have also changed the way that they buy today.
There’s a lot of due diligence in the process now of buying a product or service beforehand. And people like to now go onto, Google or Yahoo or something to look up the person’s name or the company’s name, and look at reviews that there’s different types of checklists that we all do now naturally, before you buy something.
The idea of Impact Annex came about. It’s time that we normally understand that this is where things are going, but it’s also a shift in mindset. I went to business school, I’ve been a business owner. I worked in different businesses and it’s really the same thing where it’s pitch your product, pitch, your idea pitch sell push.
And then it becomes a knowing at some points and people would like to be pushed. And so I’m on a mission to impact 1 billion people out there. And with the message of you should give before you receive. And I’m sure some of us have heard that before from, our grandfather or grandmother or charger committee members overall.
And it’s true. If you get. First before you receive great things, come out of that. And that’s what impact is all about. It’s about giving free receiving, and I showed that mindset shift and I use different tools to help people thrive and be a thought leader and stand out. So going straight to the point, what is Impact Annex?
Is basically we in an organization. That helps organizations create a philanthropic arm to their business or to the organization. Now, does that mean basically let’s take a for-profit organization, for example. I would come speak to the owner and be like, Hey, what do you care about? What kind of causes that you really that’s close to you?
It can be the red cross. It can be, saving animals, saving children, you name it. What’s that special thing that’s close to your heart. And typically they’ll tell me what that is. And if they don’t know what that is, I can tell them, what have you ever thought about giving back to community by just teaching people?
or what you do for your for-profit. So rather than pitching and selling your service and products, why not teach people about your products and services and how you help people and what are the pain points that you’re trying to solve and become look and be like, huh? That’s a different angle.
What is, and so once we come down to, all right, so this is what we’re going to do. This is the cause that you’re going to focus on. I file and register a nonprofit. On their behalf, it can be in the U S or it can be in Canada. And once we have a nonprofit set up and once we have the. Targeted or, all set with agreed upon.
I tend to focus on a particular grant that many people don’t know about Brent, and that is that there’s the Google nonprofit program grant and Google provides nonprofits with $120,000 with Google ads. Every single year for a lifetime, which is remarkable. Number two, I found out that Google only works with one partner.
In this to validate nonprofits and their contexts when they’re a global organization. And if you don’t do that application well or correctly, you can get denied and you can no longer apply to Google which is unfortunate. And then number three is Google does, is they don’t provide good support on this.
I Their website is nice and shiny with testimonials and everything else. They tell the steps on how to do this, but it’s harder than you think it is. And all they have to offer is heavy documentation. I don’t know why, but that’s what it is. And we all know that this many people have lost many people out there who are not technical to understand these documentations.
So that’s where we come in as well. You can do it yourself or you can have us help you do this whole process. We have a hybrid model, which is a done for you. And you do it yourself as well. So we teach you there’s a video series and you can submit information to us. We can take a look at it and we’ll give it back to you to submit.
And you have weekly support from us and support is live on Facebook. And also we give you best practices that do’s and don’ts so they won’t interrupt your grants. And also how to scale up and optimize your ads. It can be found on Google and on the front page. Now for a for-profit you may be asking, oh, thanks.
So how does that benefit me? I By doing that, okay. I have a nonprofit now, what we’re going to as grants. The several things you can do you can test ads. $10,000 per month to test ads is enough money to make you dangerous. What does that mean, basically? You can test different markets, different age groups, races languages.
countries, nationwide different states. You name it. You can test different things out and whatever works. Take that and optimize and skill up right now. How do you make those, both those non-profit for-profit work together, right? I’m sure that’s one of the things you guys are thinking about right now, it’s basically when you have your nonprofit.
So for profit, for example, is Joe’s plumbing, right? We create this academy called Joe’s academy for plumbers and what Joe’s gonna do. On his nonprofit, he’s going to create courses. It can be webinars presentations, just teaching people about plumbing, overall plumbing.
One-on-one. And what’s great about it is that when people find you online on a nonprofit, they’re going to one have access to your content to learn for free. And in exchange, you’re going to have a. Some sort of contact form or some sort of a form that says, give me your first name, last name, email, and we’ll give you access to our content.
Great. As you grow that mailing list you can follow up and be like, Hey Brent. So I saw that you downloaded my my workshop on plumbing 1 0 1. I hope you loved it. If you need any information, let me know. Or if you’re interested in a partnership or a addition to help, here’s my website, Joe plumbing.com.
Happy to support. Great right. Ciao. And what happens is, I We go on YouTube. We go to school, you name it wherever we get educated naturally would tend to have a respect for that person. That’s teaching us something. We see them as my meastro, or professor or someone that’s just of high authority.
That’s teaching us and we’re learning from them. And somehow like to partner up with them where we trust them. And that’s what’s happening in the backend is that you’re building your brands. You’re building your trustworthiness. You’re doing good will you’re doing great for your community. You becoming a thought leader in your space, you stick out from your competitor
and people naturally want to work with you because you have that. Non-profit where you giving first. So that’s really the strategy behind it. Is your for-profit does this, your nonprofit does this and they both support each other. Now that’s just for profit, for nonprofits that are existing, you’re already halfway.
Which is we just help you apply for the grants and help you understand Google ads and how to optimize it so you can promote your mission, help fundraising and basically get out there worldwide. So that’s what we do at Impact Annex.
I’m part of entrepreneurs organization. It’s a global network of entrepreneurs. There’s chapters in every city. There’s one in Boston. There’s one here in Minneapolis. We are using this grant. It is a non, it is five, I don’t know, five or something. Whatever’s and as a pure non-profit, there is no there’s no for-profit arm of EO.
It is effective on getting our goal is to get membership in our own local chapter. So I think what I hear you saying is that you provide the help for somebody that’s either already registered. Backing up, you would provide help. If somebody wants to create a nonprofit to helping them navigate some of those waters and creating it as that correct?
Yeah, we do all the fun administration on your behalf, in the U S or in Canada. Okay.
Get you all set up and running. Perfect. I think the exciting part is, and a lot of people don’t know about this Google grant, this nonprofit grant for ads is that once you become that, that nonprofit you are eligible to apply for the grant and start.
Using the Google ad network for that. And I can say here we rarely ever even use up our $10,000 a month. It’s a lot of ads to run for for entrepreneurs for trying to get people to join an entrepreneurs organization. But I think you’re also right. It does give them an opportunity for people to test some of these things.
Even as a nonprofit to learn to navigate how Google works. I did do that Joe’s plumbing thing. And I went through all those, and then my wife said, no, just I’m hiring a plumber because there was water everywhere. I never, it never worked for me, but I know a lot of people are going to be able to do the DIY plumbing thing.
So maybe walk us through how you would take an existing nonprofit and help them with the Google part of it, or just getting them on to the ad network.
Basically I actually had a workshop that we conducted three weeks ago for no 40 non-profits. It was great because I got to really understand what are the common pain points for these 40 nonprofits and a large majority of it was technical skills.
They were, non-profits already up and running and again, they also didn’t know about this Google nonprofit program even existed. Not only that, we walked through the steps and how to get this Google grant. And like I mentioned earlier, one of the things that’s getting through tech soup and once you get to tech soup, they give you this token that allows you to apply for this for the Google grant.
Now what some people could also miss out. Tech soup, they partner up with a lot of other large organizations, similar to Google, like Microsoft as well. And I’m on a tech suit website. They actually have a page for partners where you can look up all the partners that they work with, including Google.
And with this token that they give you only for 60 days to apply, you can use this token, to not only apply for Google, but all these other organizations, somebody give you free computers, they give you discounts and support and all sort of supplies that can be helpful for your nonprofit organization. We were short showcasing them that page of partners.
So they take advantage of that opportunities as well to support them. And then number two, it was understanding how Google non-profit program works overall because you’d be surprised how many people get the grant. And then two months later their account gets suspended or canceled because they didn’t know how to use it properly.
Like I mentioned, Google, they provide heavy documentation, but then to give you all the answers, they don’t give you a best practices and do’s, and don’ts that much. So we teach them not to enter a debit or credit card on the backend because that will interrupt the. We also show them the website policy that Google expects before they give you the grants.
Google has their expectations, making sure that it’s mobile friendly, making sure there’s no commercial activity or language on the website and a few other points there. That one has to go along that line. So we teach them to make, to make sure you go through that policy very well. And also we start teaching about.
Google ads can be very complicated for some folks, if you’re not really tech savvy. So we, create these videos to show them step-by-step how to use it. What each certain things mean, buttons, wordings what are keywords, so help them with the, define their keywords and also how to.
Use pixels to to track everything. Because if you know how to use a pixels and conversions, stuff like that, you’re able to cut track on all on your other social media platforms, how things work and attract the right people. Not just only on. So we do share best practices, so they don’t have to go through the headaches and they can get fast results less than 90 days and how to optimize their their ads.
Number four, we like to set up automation. We tend to use Zapier to do a automation things to make things easier for people. It can mean, Lee comes in, goes to your CRM and then it sets up a booking on Calendly. So all these automation things to make them much more efficient because sometimes if we don’t know about automation, we tend to hire more people and they can do those sort of roles.
Now there’s software that can allow us to scale up and do these sort of things. So we’d have to. Fund raise more money to find an additional marketing person. We like to save people money safe. People’s in terms of. And help them scale up and get to their goals a lot faster.
So that’s what we do for an existing nonprofit.
I know that one thing in your bio, you said that you help serve underserved communities. You help with underserved communities. Maybe tell us about how you’re helping in that. And maybe why those underserved communities don’t have the kind of access that.
You’re a fortune 500 company that wants to do a non-profit would have,
yeah. Happy to do that. So actually have a nonprofit here in the U S and a it’s called E S G housing Inc. Stands for environmental social governance. And our mission is pretty simple as to provide access to affordable housing
for low-income families and seniors. Now why is that important to me? Because I grew up in the projects. You could say, that’s the word we use it’s projects and I’m in Lawrence, Massachusetts. And I remember not having a lot of access to resources or education. I it was just me my family I, all I did was just, live there play game with the kids, really nothing else. I didn’t see any sort of, a lot of programs. Maybe I was too young. I don’t know. But what I do remember is, as I grown all these years and, diving into real estate and I’m still around these communities. And I have friends who live in these communities and they still give me their feedback and how things work.
People feel like they are, that the government is not working for them. And they show me around, so I created this this nonprofit, not because I’m also. But I’ve been in their shoes. I have friends who are in these projects. I have people who can’t find apartments I have on people who yes, they can find apartments, but also the too expensive.
And within my experience I’ve learned a lot about technology. I learned a lot about robotics 3d printing. And what I’m hoping to do with this nonprofit is to build a lot of affordable homes with a lot of green technologies and materials. That includes plastics instead of concrete and, create homes
under three months under six months, these are, that are very it’s going to change the game. I call it, the future of technology or future of construction. But it’s basically being able to build homes in a faster pace. Building homes that are safe building homes that have resources that needs access to education, access to programs nationwide.
So I’m gonna pause it, creating different partnerships to make that possible. So I’m serving those communities that are distressed and underserved, just how I grew up. Cause I know how it feels and I think today in America, there’s still a lot of opportunities, a lot of fems, other need, and a lot of communities that are still distressed.
And for those folks that are not in real estate these are called are call qualified opportunity zones, which are zones that need to be developed that the town or city they incentivize you to build schools shopping places, affordable homes, et cetera. And it also incentivizes the investors as well.
So overall that’s how I’m serving, serve communities. I grew up in and in other states is by creating affordable housing with these green technologies.
That’s great. Yeah. And I think if anybody has traveled to other parts of the world and I’ll point out Venezuela as particular, that there are areas in south America where there’s different levels of economy and emergence.
I traveled to Bolivia quite a bit, and I know that their economy is completely different than Mexico or even Dominican Republic. So the closer you get to the U S things get a little bit better, but I think we as Americans we get notified or you don’t understand what the rest of the world lives and how they live and how lucky we are.
And then how many resources we have to help our fellow brothers and sisters to lift up and and move up. So I applaud you in that.
Thank you Brent, that’s one thing that I am very appreciative of is I’ve been able to live in the Dominican Republic, live in Mexico, travel often to Columbia been in Venezuela.
And I’ve learned that there’s more to life than what we think and the different perspective that I’ve been through. And I seen, and I understand what hard work is. And I’m thankful that I grew up in, in my environment with my family, pretty humble. My wife is from Colombia from a third world and I’m humbled and blessed that I’ve had these experiences because it has made me who I am today.
Using Google Yahoo, just promoting things online. Practicing inbound marketing as well. So I think that a lot of potential to do good and to impact many people out there in many businesses.
Kept me humble for sure. And blessed to have what I have today and being, raised here as an American, but it has opened up my perspective on the opportunities and where the need is and where we can provide help. ESG Housing Inc and Impact Annex. It’s just the beginning. I’m planting my seeds here in America to boot case studies to create some sort of long-term game here.
But my long-term goal is to expand to these countries that I visited, because I’ve seen that, they’re still countries out there that still do business face to face. They use radio ads, newspaper ads, they do WhatsApp promotions right on his communication apps. And. They’re all transforming into the digital world as well.
So they’re all beginning to, create online websites that creating inbound marketing techniques offers, right? They’re transforming this digital age and all this it’s going to be helpful for them, especially the Impact Annex $10,000 here for us is about 30, 40 million pesos in Colombia
and that can make a big impact for any business down there to be found on Google. Just think about, back when we got internet and we started having AOL and Google, anyone who knew the. Dot com era and was able to be on a first page of anything or just have a page. I You’re a thriving, I you’re ahead of the curve.
So that opportunity still occurs for other countries. And we’re about to provide that opportunity with this Google ad grants. So the hopes in the long-term goal is to expand to other countries and create more JV opportunities. And on the ESG housing, Don’t get me wrong. I already have people in Peru who want have 500 single homes to be built with these 3d printer machines.
So there’s the demand is growing there’s education. That’s still happening evolving. But I’d love to see how we can do more international work as we get. I’m trying to get my feet wet here in the us first, but the vision, the long-term goal, the feature, it’s going to be a beautiful thing. We’re gonna help a lot of people.
And I think achieving a goal of impacting 1 billion lives is a reality, and I can’t do it alone. I can only do it with everyone who has similar vision, who feels that energy through this podcast. And hopefully that we can connect at, in this podcast to make that dream into reality.
And that’s great. So we have a couple of minutes left, so maybe tell, help people understand how they could get ahold of you.
What are the right people that that you’d like to talk to. And and
yeah. Happy, thanks so much, Brent. For those listening, if you have an interest to learn more about Impact Annex if anyone has to look you up on Google, then you’re a great fit for us because this grant is for anyone that’s a, that can be found on Google.
So that can be a for-profit or non-profit, we’re happy to help you out. Just visit our website at www.ImpactAnnex.org that’s spelled ANNEX and browse around and any contact form you, you find there will lead up to me. We’ll have a half hour conversation. Just learn more about your current situation and and for those folks that are interested in learning more about ESG housing, Inc.
We have a website www dot ESG, housing.org, and we’re looking to, of course, any donners like the fund lights donate, happy to have you part of the family. And in terms of partners we’re looking for partnerships for developers, landlords former mayors or governors anyone that’s involved in QLZ which has qualified opportunity zones and any volunteers or potential community members like to join our team.
That’ll be phenomenal because then we can scale up very rapidly. We’d love to have people in different states because your, your town and city of situation more than I do. And we’re looking to scale up that way, where you can be an ambassador for ESG house Inc for your committee.
And you tell us, what’s happening what’s needs and let’s start building and helping your community and friends and family. Cause that’s what really it comes down to is making a win-win for everyone. Keep growing together. So that’s my my message to everyone today. And I, again, I appreciate Brent and everyone for listening today and let’s build up America together.
I’ll put all the, I’ll put the links in the show notes so people can find those grade Reynoldo at the end of every podcast, I give you an opportunity to do a shameless plug go ahead and plug whatever you’d like to.
Sure. I thank you so much, Brent, for the opportunity.
I guess my plug is Come to support ESG housing, Inc. I think that’s a big priority right now for many people is to find affordable homes. We’re all seeing prices are jacking up everywhere and it’s hurting. I had a friend last night, came over saying my budget is only $1,600. I can’t find a place I have to move up at the 14th, and it really hurts me that I really.
If I had, a few buildings, but dude, I’ll plug into this unit. Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover the first two months. Give yourself, on your feet, happy to help you out, bro. No worry about And that’s the organization that, or the community I’m trying to build here is.
Let us be your plan B or your plan A regardless we have your back. Which one thing I forgot to mention Brent, is we’re looking to within this model is to create an emergency fund so that every building that we create for families they’re all going to work interconnected. So all that cash.
Goes among all these buildings. So that let’s say the epidemic will happen again. Basically, and he can’t pay rent. We’ll take money from that fund to pay your rents until you’re back on your feet. That also includes providing little to free internet in terms of it can be a low cost or it can be free internet, but we’re looking to pay people’s bills when it comes to internet, because we want might not be the issue here.
We want you to have access to these resources and There is
right.
So it’s I think people make it over complicated. I think many people sometimes it can be ego. It can be just about money, but I’m trying to take away all those roadblocks and just really help people leave. Both all the way and start doing start executing.
Because I think we have a power to do great things here if we put our minds to it. And if you work together, so that’s my plug a little bit long, but basically supporting us at ESG housing. There you
go. No, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. And again, I’ll put all the links in the show notes.
Reynoldo Santana the. Yeah, Gusto. Great. Have a great afternoon.
Thank you.
