Business growth – Paco Garrido

When you started out in marketing, did you think you would end up managing teams?

The truth is that when I first got into marketing, I didn’t even think I would end up working in it.

I’m the kind of person who thinks everything through carefully (one of those people who spends three months researching to make sure the coffee machine they’re going to buy is the right choice), and when it came time to decide on a career path, I decided to study something versatile so I could delay the final decision, as it meant much more than drinking bad coffee.

I studied for a degree in Communication for this very reason (mainly because of my interest in the audiovisual world and because I knew it would allow me to pivot), and there I began to mix advertising, marketing, journalism and pure communication.

I took all kinds of subjects, from digital marketing to leadership and organisational communication. The more I studied, the less clear I was about what to do, so I took on internships to try out the two main disciplines:

• Internship at Juan y Medio: a trial run to see what the world of television is like (I even appeared dressed as a pirate on one programme).
• Internship at a marketing agency: I spent a few months there supporting the SEO team, which led to me becoming the manager of the ‘Te blogueo’ project, having to hire and organise staff due to the momentum we had built up.

As I said, team management came naturally to me, although as I have always worked in small companies, I have never dedicated myself solely to it. I think I have always been good with people and trying to resolve conflicts, so little by little I positioned myself in this role.

What strategy have you used at the agency that made you think, ‘I nailed it’?

Although it wasn’t at the agency, one of the actions that gave a huge return was sending letters to all the marketing agencies in Spain, with a card inside and a direct call to the reader.

It was 2019, and the obsession with digital meant that all kinds of commercial activity was done by email or phone call (which is quite impersonal). The idea was simple: to reach digital projects through a physical letter. We manually extracted the GMB addresses of about 3,000 companies, put the letters in envelopes and sent them out.

Within three weeks, users and new customers were flooding in, including three or four high-profile accounts that we easily secured and which represented a huge leap in turnover.

This summer, 6 years later, a project that recognised me at Seo On The Beach told me that they thought it was brilliant and that they had been following me since they received the letter.

And any screw-ups you can tell us about?

Bad decisions, poor management and mistakes due to carelessness. There are quite a few things to tell, ha ha ha.

I worked for a long time in the Latin American market, where we had to use accounts like Moneygram to send payments. Once I transferred €3,000 to the wrong address, sending it to a .com instead of a .co.

Then there are hundreds of everyday mistakes that I think we all have to go through (yes, those classic events, ha ha).

A very delicate email in which I added the wrong person, drawing up an “open” agreement with aspects that ended up costing us money, allowing a project not to pay 50% of a share in advance and then that same project disappearing once it was done…

I remember one particularly painful screw-up, which was the mismanagement of a very large project that I had been trying to land for some time. A ‘special’ client who found fault with everything (subjectively), so after dedicating many hours to them, I decided it wasn’t for us and told them that the work would be done by a collaborator, giving them some support to ensure that everything went well, but they ended up managing everything directly.

The result? A poor outcome due to the type of client, many hours wasted on our part, unnecessary headaches, quite a bit of money lost, three new grey hairs and the loss of a very valuable contact.

If something isn’t right for you, the best thing you can do is reject it and walk away.

Any marketing advice that you see everyone repeating but that is useless?

Giving advice, for example. Everyone started generating empty content and ended up hating ‘tips’.

Another, although quite controversial, would be: ‘You have to be on the internet’.

There are many companies that are obsessed with appearing on Google even though they are traditional local businesses. A Business Profile makes sense, but I don’t see the point in a haberdashery or greengrocer’s that is not going to go digital spending resources on creating a website or putting effort into social media.

How do you organise your tasks?

Ultimately, I believe that what you do every day is what shapes the business strategy, so it is impossible to separate day-to-day operations from the direction you are trying to take your company.

We are a fairly horizontal company with very good direct communication, which makes overall management ‘simple’. I am also fortunate to have colleagues who do not need me, so self-management is essential at Amarillo Limón.

We use Trello for day-to-day management (as well as for direct communication with projects in their respective workspaces) and Slack for internal communication, both for our company and for our various clients.

Every month we have a general company meeting, where we review the results of each project, review the work done and set out the actions to be carried out in the following month.

I set priorities based on my feelings and my own criteria, depending on the progress of each project, the impact that an action may have on the whole and the interdependence of departments, trying to ensure that anything that blocks a colleague’s work is resolved as quickly as possible.

We have a bad habit of being quite immediate (something that projects greatly appreciate), so despite having a monthly roadmap, many issues arise on a daily basis, forcing us to adapt our scheduled work.

In your work or customer relations, is there anything that makes you lose your patience?

This question could fill another three interviews, considering how much I enjoy complaining, ha ha ha.

I’m not a big fan of audio messages (I transcribe them all so I can read them) or calls that start with, ‘I’ll send you a message,’ but I understand that, after all, everyone has their own way of communicating.

One of the things that annoys me the most is when clients don’t listen to us. This point comes from the business advice we give to projects.

We work with online shops, so there are many factors outside of marketing that can cause a project to fail or not work properly (in terms of sales). After racking your brains to advise the client, you give them a roadmap and some points to work on, and they completely ignore you, later demanding results.

Why would anyone shop at your store if you don’t have prices, product variety or added value for the customer? I can give you visibility, but you have to improve your business for this to work.

I also lose patience with those who spend more resources to appearing good than to actually trying to be good, but I think this is something we will have to deal with all our lives.

How do you do it?

‘El Paquismo’ was my birthday present in 2025, clearly reflecting how geeky we are at Amarillo Limón and all the experiences we have had over the last few years.

Good vibes are created when everyone agrees, has affinity and tries to smooth out any rough patches we encounter along the way. It’s easy for 10 people to get along, especially when we’ve become true friends.

We take great care when hiring for this very reason: there are highly qualified people we have rejected because they don’t fit in with our way of being or because others had an attitude more in line with ours, because no matter how good a piece is, if it doesn’t fit in with the whole machine, it’s better to reject it.

On the other hand, I am a person who does not keep quiet about almost anything. If I do not like something, I may tell you as a ‘joke’, but I will tell you. I try to get the whole team to speak their minds to avoid dragging out tensions over time, which can end up hurting us professionally.

When everything is clear and there is good communication, you can concentrate on working.

Has ‘El Paquismo’ helped you get customers?

El Paquismo provides us with ‘blessings’, although the website is somewhat private, so only the most devoted have access to it, including the Indexando Marketing team.