By: Sophie Allen Sep 10/2025
As one can imagine, finding time to sit down for a conversation with the head of a company can be tricky business. Indeed, apart from the occasional hot sauce recommendation, I hesitate to distract Flavio from his day-to-day, so having the opportunity to take an hour of his time to chat about marketing and get his thoughts on various aspects of Snaptech was a real treat.
Besides being our boss, the team knows Flavio for his intense love of Christmas (if you know, you know), his competitive spirit, and his growing Lego YouTube channel. He cares deeply about the team and our clients–whether he’s among the first to sign up for our quarterly volunteering days, donating to the Food Bank through his yearly elaborate Christmas display, or having heartfelt speeches on a team member’s anniversary at Snaptech.
What you’re about to read reflects all of the above, from marketing to what is most important in a leader, team, and even clients. We briefly talk about Lego and, yes, even a little bit about Christmas. It wouldn’t be a conversation with Flavio without it.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Every day is truly different, but I would probably categorize them into different sections. First is always dealing with any day-to-day pressing issues that may come up either within the team or with clients. I will normally start looking at emails, responding to anything that I need from the team members, clients, prospective clients, or anything like that. That’s pretty much how my day begins, and that more or less dictates what the majority of the day may look like.
Sales right now is a big part of my day-to-day, the prospecting, responding to client proposals, etc. That’s not something I want to continue doing indefinitely, something that, as we continue building our sales team, I want to start delegating more of the sales to the team and just focus more on the high-level client relationship management.
There’s always administrative work, accounting-related stuff, invoicing, things like that that need to be taken care of. There are a lot of team-related things that come up on a daily basis–dealing with questions from the team, potentially working with Jeremy, working with Jess in HR, talking about HR-related issues, anything like that. So, that kind of covers a big part of the day and wherever I can focus on strategy, learning, reading information online, and watching videos. That would cover the bulk of a typical day-to-day.
What do you like best about working in digital marketing?
Lots of things, but two in particular stand out to me. First, I feel that what we do in digital marketing has a positive effect on people’s lives, internally with the team, to make a living, and second is on the client and their business. The work that we do helps those businesses generate additional revenue and achieve their goals. We had a client many years ago who, when they started it was just a husband and wife working crazy long days by themselves. Now, a number of years on, they have 15-20 employees, can take trips abroad, put their kids through private school, etc. That’s an example of how we help people have a better life. That would probably be what I like most about digital marketing–we just have a positive influence on many people’s lives.
What would you say is the most difficult part of digital marketing?
The most difficult part is that this is an industry that is completely unregulated. Sadly, it’s an industry where all you need is a computer and Wi-Fi, and you are now a marketer. All you need to do is go to Google, pass the tests (and there are lots of ways to get creative on how to pass the test), and get your certifications so that you can say you’re a Google Ads certified person, and now you’re a marketer that has certifications. But you’re not a true marketer unless you have experienced the knowledge, the education…pretty much every single person on our team has gone to university, college, or taken programs and courses to have the expertise that many people in the industry lack. As an agency, we have a massive responsibility to our clients because they entrust us with their hard-earned revenue and budgets to invest that revenue into marketing and advertising that will generate a positive return on that investment. The most difficult part is when we have clients that we’ve had great relationships with, but they got wowed by somebody else, and they end up moving because the wow factor was just too big. Once in a while, clients forget to disconnect us from some of their accounts, so we can still see activity, and we see agencies that don’t touch their accounts for two, three, four, or five months, yet they’re collecting monthly retainers. I would say that’s the most difficult part–when we’re doing a good job but the client gets wowed, leaves, and then things fall apart, and they struggle, their business struggles, their employees struggle.
What qualities make a good leader or manager?
So many different things. I think if I were to summarize would be emotional intelligence. It gives you the ability to manage your emotions and understand the emotions of the people around you. We are in the people business; our team is our business, you are the business. Without them, there would be no Snaptech. Self-awareness is hugely important. You always have to be aware of who you are. Self-regulation comes with self-awareness, especially when dealing with clients; you have to have self-regulation, always maintain your cool and be professional. You need motivation and empathy. Empathy is a huge part that’s difficult to comprehend unless you’re aware of it, I guess. And social skills; at the end of the day, having a business and dealing with people, you’ve got to have social skills. You can’t just blurt out whatever is on your mind.
What qualities make a good team?
Again, emotional intelligence, because you’re dealing with clients and your coworkers. I would rank it beside hunger to always be learning more. This is an industry that is changing quickly, and we need to keep up with the changes and always be learning about new strategies, ideas, platforms, technologies, and opportunities. I think it’s wrong not to have that hunger. So yeah, emotional intelligence and hunger for learning.
What do you like best about the team here at Snaptech?
I like how tightly integrated everybody is, how collaborative and supportive of each other everybody is. It’s something I’m most proud of, that we’ve been able to build this team that can do all of that. This is an incredibly demanding job; we’re shuffling and juggling multiple clients at the same time. I like to use the analogy of plate spinners in a circus; we’re constantly spinning an enormous number of plates, which, if we’re not careful, will wobble, fall, and break.
Our team knows they can reach out to any other team member and get help when needed. It’s fantastic to see the collaboration and know that we have a team that we can trust, that will listen, that will provide help if needed and not be judged.
What qualities make an ideal client?
First of all, they take their business seriously. I know every client takes their business seriously; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in business, but some are just comfortable doing OK and do not take advantage of all the opportunities we identify. Over the years, I’ve seen many of these businesses vanish. So, I would say that the ideal client should be somebody who really has that drive to grow their business, and if they’re just happy coasting, they’re not the ideal client for us.
We want to have a client that knows what they don’t know, and what I mean by that is that they’re the experts at whatever service or product their business has, but they know that marketing and advertising are not their expertise. So they have to rely on trusted partners like us to help them out. They need to be honest. They need to be personable. We have our core values at Snaptech, and we want to make sure that there is an alignment with those core values. We don’t want to work with clients who are completely opposite to those values.
If you could have any company in the world as a client, who would you want to work with?
I would definitely say Lego. I just love what the company has built over the years, but what I admire most about them is their resilience. This is a company that, when they were still manufacturing wooden toys, landed a massive order, and then the factory burned to the ground. They were able to rebuild the business and then overcome all of these different challenges. In the early 2000s, they were almost bankrupt, but with a new business direction and new leadership, they were able to turn things around and look where they are now.
They have all of the right things there. It’s a fun company. They’re bringing joy and happiness to families and people of all ages. They are understanding the sustainability issues that they’re facing by being plastic, so the massive effort they’re putting in to transform this company to become a sustainable company that potentially in the long term will walk away from plastic, I would say that would be my ideal client.
Where do you see Snaptech in five years?
I want to see the company in continuous positive growth. Just continue to see the same direction we’re going as a marketing agency, but the long-term goal is to continue embracing new technologies, ideas, and strategies. AI is obviously the whole hype that everyone’s been talking about for the past two and a half years. Whether AI as we see it today continues in that same model, nobody really knows what it’s going to look like in five years, but this is something that is here to stay. So, as an agency, how can we continue embracing these new technologies? Not so that we can use more machines than humans to do the work, but for the technology to allow us to be more efficient at the work that we do, so we can then provide more value to our clients by having more time for us to develop strategies and things that might be too time-consuming because of day-to-day operations. That would be the ideal direction I’d like to have the company continue in.
If you could expand Snaptech’s offerings, what would you like to have?
I’d like to expand more into the world of AI automations. Not because it’s the flavour of the month, but to continue finding new solutions that will have a potential impact on our clients’ businesses. Something that is going to help us achieve their goals and objectives. Currently, what is missing is that we’ll come up with strategies, campaigns, everything to drive traffic to the business, but once we get that lead, it goes to the company. We no longer can see what is happening, as we don’t have access to their internal systems, their CRMs, their email marketing or sales pros, etc. If we could have deeper insights into that, we could see how the work we are doing is translating in the real world, in the business, and see if it is helping their bottom line.
As a business owner, what advice would you give someone starting their own business?
I would say if you’re starting your own business, do the research. Take the time to learn everything there is about the business that you want to get into. Learn about the competition, who they are, and what they’re doing. Dissect their business so you know them inside and out. Learn and do the research about your potential customers and who they’re going to be. Get to know them so you can see what the opportunity is and carve out a niche. It doesn’t have to be something huge that will make you a multi-millionaire or a transnational company, and that is OK, but it can help you get established. That can help you get to a certain extent with growth, and then you can set yourself ambitious but achievable goals to work toward. Make sure that when you set the goal, nothing is going to come between you and it. Become obsessed and chase the goal, but also make the next one before you reach it and continue like that.
If you weren’t in digital marketing, what do you think you would be doing? Would you want to be an owner?
The last question is fairly simple; yes. I would definitely still want to be an owner. I grew up seeing my dad as an entrepreneur, always being a business owner, so it is in my DNA. Part of the reason I more or less fell into this industry, probably as early as 1997, I was dabbling in this world; my dad was a very successful publisher of trade magazines back in Mexico, and advertising was the primary business model for the magazine. So I grew up knowing about advertising on both ad campaigns, direct mail, and the things that used to be big back then. I honestly can’t think of doing anything else, but one thing I always thought about, maybe 25 years ago, was mechanical engineering. In particular, I was inclined towards aircraft mechanical engineering, but that’s a weird passion that I have on the side that I’ve never pursued.
Editor’s Note: This totally explains the love for Lego.
Fun Question Time. What is your secret ingredient for success when making tacos?
Ok, this is going to sound really weird because it’s sort of related to work, but it comes down to passion. As many of you know, I’m a foodie. I love food because it’s so representative of so many cultures, so many societies, and it’s something that in our Western culture is ingrained into just about everything that we do. I love experiencing new foods, new flavours, and when I’m making food, it’s not just that we’re making something that I’m going to enjoy, but I know that when we have guests and I make dinner for them, I want to see them truly enjoy it. So it’s not an ingredient, but it also is–have that passion to love making those tacos so much that they’re gonna be the best tacos in the world. You could just put garlic and onion, and they’ll probably be better than any other taco you’ve had, you know.
Last question, bit of a silly one. We have roughly 12 members of Snaptech, so, theoretically, we could make a calendar for our clients featuring one of us every month. Would you rather be December for your love of Christmas or May for Cinco de Mayo?
As a Mexican, I don’t really celebrate Cinco de Mayo; that’s more of a North American thing because it sounds cool. Really, all it is is just a battle that we won in Mexico against France. It wasn’t that we won the war, just a battle. So in the big scheme of things, it’s nothing massive to celebrate. My immediate answer is definitely, for sure, 100% Christmas.
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About the Author
Sophie Allen