Who Is This Dude?

Hey, nice to meet you. Thanks for being here and wanting to know a little more about me, I think that’s very cool.

Let me first tell you a bit about this blog. SocialMouths is my vehicle to deliver free advice on what takes to be successful online. I mostly talk about blogging, social media, web traffic, content marketing, conversion and email marketing.

The goal is to provide massive value on a weekly basis with a 0% bullshit attitude.

If you dig, enter your email below to get SocialMouths delivered for free right in your inbox.

A little about me

My name is Francisco Rosales. 44. Living outside beautiful Los Angeles, close enough to love it and far enough to avoid traffic. I’m the author of SocialMouths.

I was born in Guatemala with a side of Italian (Thanks Mom!). I pretty much turned independent at age 16 after dropping out of high school. Came back after a year to enroll myself back in a private school and graduated with my own money. I was then recruited by a company as a designer without one day of college so I decided to start a career in Graphic Design at the Universidad Rafael Landivar but after a couple of years I packed my shit and left to Los Angeles to never come back. I’m still here by the way…

In my 20′s I turned myself into a suit, a corporate boy. Made decent money and held management positions but I hated it. At age 30 I couldn’t take it anymore, so I quit to never work again.

Started a business with my wife without any money or experience. In three years we turned it into an 8 million dollar a year company.

I didn’t get my marketing experience at school or from gambling corporate budgets but from putting my own money on the line, learning how to create, write, produce and buying my own TV spots on national networks, running hundreds of magazine ads and selling my products online.

That took a good chunk of my 30′s but in 2007, after realizing how far we have gone and how far from our dreams we were, we shut down completely and went home to reconstruct our life as a family.

My mid-life crisis, as my wife calls it, was Mighty Boardshop, a beautiful skateshop I built myself and loved with all my heart but in only one year made me lose so much money it’s not even funny. I will neeever get close to “Retail” again in my life. I also experienced my first brushes with social media (remember the old days of MySpace?).

After taking about a year off to figure out my next step, I did what was only natural, commit 100% to marketing in the digital space by jamming at Plural, a tiny agency with big clients like Playstation, Toyota, T-Mobile and HTC to name a few. We produce all kinds of cool stuff from websites to online ad campaigns to mobile and Facebook Apps.

I also work with clients under SocialMouths, mostly with small business. Yes, there is a business behind this blog. I design and develop blogs, create blogging and social media strategies to help companies get traffic and convert to sales. As I always say, I help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla web presence into a profit powerhouse.

But not everything is business. Today I keep chasing independence, leadership, simplicity, change and common sense every day of my life. I try to unteach everything my kids learn from school and society…

I have grown slow into what I am today but I can tell you that along the way I reached freedom (and I’m not talking financially).

I honestly believe you need to give much more than what you get. I try to do that by over-delivering and exceeding expectations on every project I get involved with. Turns out making people happy is not that hard…

I own a creative mind, like everybody else. I mountain bike. I’m crazy about music, from Zeppelin to MIDIval PunditZ to Federico Aubele to Jay-Z and Marley, but if you find me listening to Manu Chao I’m usually in a state of flow!

What Others Have Said And Some Interviews

A couple of mentions and other places I have been featured on…

• Social Media Examiner just awarded SocialMouths the sweet #1 spot in the Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2012
• I was named #59 in the Top 100 Influencers in Social Media by Social Technology Review (Obama is only #67…)
• Pam Dyer of Pamorama included SocialMouths in her recent list 20 Social Media Blogs You Should Read in 2012
• Skool of Life included me in the 24 Bloggers Who Will Entertain, Inform and Inspire The World in 2011. I specially love this list because of the very cool individuals in it, some of them I actually read week after week. I highly recommend it.
• Deva Coach recently called me Rebel With A Cause in one of the coolest interviews I’ve done.
• I have been featured twice in the digital magazine In Tree Houses. If you’re not familiar with it you need to head over there and download that puppy. It’s pure awesome sauce.
• I also discussed compelling Personal Brands, taking leaps of faith and some analytics with Srini Rao on an interview for BlogcastFM, a collection of podcasts with the most relevant bloggers of this time. On this one you can experience my crazy accent.
• Was invited by Social Media Examiner to participate in the 17 Ways to Grow Your Blog From Top Bloggers.
• My post about building your own Facebook landing tab earned me a spot at Tamar’s Techipedia list of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010.

How To Contact Me

• Best and fastest way is email
• Find me online, usually on Twitter, Facebook or Google+
• Voicemails are completely eliminated from my life so don’t even bother

Again, thanks for stopping by and I hope you have fun and benefit from what I do!

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