A Tool To Improve Communication in Your Company | Chatavise COO, Ron Martinez (Podcast 352)

I have to ask myself, do I do the work myself or do I delegate it to my team? But my personality is if I have to do the work, I want to make sure there's enough notes that I can pass it and coach to someone and they can do it to the saint, to the next person. That's kind of the approach we're at right now where it's like, okay, I'm going to take the lessons that I'm learning from a CEO alliance member, knowing that what they're doing right now may not be in the cards for us yet from a budget perspective or something like that, but I can still learn a little bit of those lessons.

And I love what you're doing. I call it ideas. Having sex. You take a couple of ideas from your past experience, a couple ideas from what you're working on, a couple ideas from CEO alliance members. Those ideas have an idea baby and those idea babies are what really going to help you scale. All right, our guest today is Ron Martinez. He is the COO and co founder from a company called Chadivise. They are a text messaging and SMS platform. It helps companies with their relationship management, reputation management. They really help with companies with their full end to end side of the customer journey. They're also a supplier for the COO Alliance. Ron is a member of the COO Alliance. So we get into talking about how to leverage texting in your business. Where companies use texting and SMS services. Wrong. Where companies can really leverage this and why it can be more beneficial than email management or email marketing and lots of the other marketing that we do with our clients or that we don't do with our clients. He also really identifies some key areas that companies, almost all companies in fact, are missing massive opportunities to have better relationships with their customers, with their suppliers and even with their employees. And he's going to talk about the journey of building out a company because he was a co founder and also the coo. He's going to talk about building a company and listening to customers and having to adapt and build the product. Listening to customers, but also knowing where to cut those customers off. And not just build for the sake of building. You'll love this episode. We'll see you on the inside. This one you may also want to watch on our Second in Command podcast YouTube channel. So, hey Ron, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to chatting with you for a number of reasons. Number one, we are a customer of chat device. So the CEO alliance has signed up as a client recently and we're my team. Meredith, my EA and Jesse are both super excited about what you're doing with us now. So secondly, I have used some of the services like what chadvise does for years. I remember probably about seven years ago I was a speaker and I set up this text me at this number and I all of a sudden had people into my funnel with a, sadly, a very bad service that I'm not going to throw them under the bus. But the service worked really well until it didn't. And I'm excited to get that started with you again because it really was really big at me getting people into my funnel and being able to market to them. But then thirdly, I'm also just kind of interested in the fact that you're also a COO alliance member. So I want to understand your perspective as to why you became a member of the CO alliance before I even became a client of yours. So I want to kind of weave around that. But why don't you start off with explaining what Chad Evise is, where the company kind of came from and who your ideal client is. So that'll give us some perspective when we get into the rest of the story.

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much, you know, for letting us in. You know, we were actually an exception to becoming a member in the CEO alliance because we didn't quite have that revenue amount. We didn't quite have like the employee headcount, we didn't have none of that stuff.

Right.

But whenever we reached out and it was because I was doing research on what the heck is a CEO, you know, so I'm talking to Rob. I was, I kind of semi retired from just saving money, having a few good investments, do good, and being very just like frugal about everything. Almost like the Fire movement. Even though I never officially joined that January 2021, I left the bank. I was good, I retired. I knew I saved up enough to not have to work to about 75 years old, as long as I don't increase my standard of living. And one of my biggest areas of opportunity was like fostering relationships outside of the corporate world. So I started calling around and Rob was one of my best friends in college and a roommate of mine. But we had lost touch for a little while and when he told me a little bit about what he was doing, I was like, wait, you're not just a texting platform, you're an end to end client experience platform. That's what you are for most of the Companies that use you. And when he started telling me a little bit more about the capabilities and some of the roadmap things that he wanted to do, I started seeing natural customers kind of like rise up to it. And one of those could be a bank. But I think there's some things where we need to, you know, kind of cross off the checklist, sort of speak before we get to that level. But to be honest with you, a lot of, a lot of the different types of businesses, a lot of different types of even solo entrepreneurs are people that could be potential customers if they're only using the texting from their CRM capabilities. And that's it. Those are the people we want to talk to.

So can you explain to me and explain to our listener because there's a lot of people out there that really don't understand. Give us three specific different use cases of where companies could leverage texting or the SMS kind of software that chat device probably provides. Give us three specific different style of use cases because I have one I'm going to ask you about in a second.

Yeah, so I'll give you one with let's say the survey aspect. I'm going to bring this up because I haven't brought this up in a while and I had a customer literally tell me why didn't you start with that? You know, and that was basically, let's say, you know, someone just finished cleaning someone's home or just finished enrolling them into a life insurance plan and a text message goes out and asking them to leave a review. When they leave that review, we turn the review into a KPI. So we could track which person, which customer facing employee assisted that customer. But what we do after that is we can actually text them a survey and let them know about different services that the company also offers. Because a lot of times the front person employee leaves a lot of the cross selling opportunities off the table because they're like, oh, I got one and they're running to the next job versus wait, go a little bit deeper with the customer. In the case of like let's say a carpet cleaning company that maybe does air duct cleaning, they do tile cleaning, they clean furniture, maybe they want commercial jobs. You can send out a survey and one of those questions can be what other services are you potentially interested in? And give those options because now you may learn that that person is a business owner that wasn't even thinking about hiring your company for that, you know.

The $24 or $20 an hour frontline employee doesn't ask all the questions to every single customer. They're too busy, they forget they don't want to be a salesperson when they're really a. Whatever. I've got a client of mine and a CEO that I used to coach. He was a part of my group, CEO coaching. He runs a company called Doggy Zone and his business does doggy daycare, but it also does dog grooming and dog walking and has all these pet products and whatever else they do. Oh, dog kennel services. Like. But if somebody comes in just for the doggy daycare, nobody's selling them on all those other services. Whereas your service like the, the chat devise, you'd be able to do that, wouldn't you?

Exactly, exactly. And businesses will have a email campaign strategy, they will have a social media strategy, but they lead the texting, which is the most potent way to connect with your customers and kind of to just what happens, happens, you know, and we want to change that.

Okay, so you're, you're kind of we're going to deal with the pink elephant in the room or the elephant in the room right away. We don't like getting texts. Right. People don't like getting texts as often or are we now getting used to it more? Are we getting more socialized to it that, you know, we didn't like getting marketing emails but now we're so used to it that we read some, we delete some. Is it the same with text messages that they're less intrusive and we are okay with it or are we more okay with getting messages from client, like from people that we've used? Like if I've been a client of Doggy Zone, am I more apt to be okay with getting a text messages from them versus being spammed by somebody I don't even know who they are? Is that the issue that we don't want to be spammed but we're okay with being marketed to by companies we use?

Yeah, for the, I'll give it for an answer for the operationally minded person. We haven't had a customer go past 4% opt out rate. Basically. That's really low. Right. Like how many people are not, you know, are unsubscribing from an email list? I don't have that number exactly. But Texting for under 4% seems pretty awesome to me. I would also say, you know, we're going to start seeing how some patterns might differ from company to company. So I could be a little biased in my data set per se. Right. You know, I would say the younger the client, the more likely they are to want to text. You'll see stats out there that will say more and more people want to text with your customer over phone calls. Right. Over another median. Right.

Like gen Gen Z doesn't even check email. So you're right. So Gen Z, Gen Y are probably more apt to be receptive. Gen X maybe a little bit even less so. But still, they're baby boomers. Probably don't want you to text them at all. They don't even know where their cell phone is. Is that fairly accurate, you know, yes or no?

Because then at the other end of the spectrum, everyone knows how to text. Your grandma knows how to text, your grandpa knows how to text. So it is kind of out there, what I would say. It's like, you know, we're not a marketing company, so we, it's funny because a lot of times when we do have to talk to a marketing department, you know, they are our biggest critic in the beginning. They're like, I don't know if we, I don't know this. And we're like, just come in with the open mind. And what we find is that since we're not a marketing company, we want to work with your marketing department and we want to work with your person that you're handing that off to. We want to work with you. That's what you do in your company, Right. It's the messaging and how you use the tool. We are a tool. Right.

So we talked about the marketing use case. What's the second use case?

So the second one I would say it's around, let's say appointment reminders. Right. So whenever I'm setting up, I go to a networking event, I can hand out my business card. I still do. Even if it's an old school thing. I like it because it's something tangible that you're putting in their hand and normally they say, oh, so tell me a little bit about your company. I can say you want a quick little demo. I want you to text the word chat to 470-375-9088 and you'll get a little text funnel with one of those things being a calendly invite. We call it intentional networking in our company.

Right.

Because how many times do you go to networking events? You say hi, bye, and nothing ever happens after that. Maybe you follow one or two people. I tend to have a way higher hit rate and having an appointment after I leave an event and it's not because I'm following up with them with phone calls and texting them individually. It's because it's systematically happening.

Makes sense, right? Do you have the text short code set up like it's to a five digit number. Text the word, you know, COO to a five digit number. Do you have that service as well?

So we can do the short code. Short code tends to be more expensive unless you're going to lease the number. That's when you'll get in the 99 per month range. But now you're sharing that number with the group of people. So you always need to be thoughtful with how you're going to, you know, do your keywords and stuff like that. And also you're limited in what you can do. So our company has gone more towards the local area code. What's the area code that is more correspondent to you? To you? Right. So that's why we have the normal, you know, length of the phone or the long form. But we could do short code and there's some clients that are starting to approach the volume where a short code is necessary because the long form might be too slow.

I like the short code. When I was standing on stages with 500 CEOs in the audience and it was text the word double, which was from my first book, Double Double, I'd be like, text the word double to this five digit number. And they were all able to do it and still pay attention. But I understand now that the long ones tend to work too. I had a client who, another COO alliance member. In fact, one of our very first CEO alliance members. He's been a member for six years now. Their company texts every single customer as they walk out the door of their there's called the redirect Health. So they do health care. They're. They have medical offices, doctor's offices, and every time a patient walks out of their door, there's an automatic text message that says, hope you loved, you know, your experience. Could you leave us a Google review? And they have thousands of Google reviews now. Is that a use case that you're pushing with your clients at all? Like Google reviews, Yelp reviews, you know, trustpilot reviews, et cetera?

Absolutely. We call it reputation management. You know, whenever someone's finishing a service, you know, we will send out a text message to leave them a review. What we find is that most companies will leave it right then and there. And some businesses, frankly, they want to leave it right then and there too. But what we do is actually turn that into a KPI. Right. So a key performance indicator where now we can start seeing, like on a leaderboard, who is actually better managing your company's reputation? Because like you said earlier, you're paying someone 15 to $25 an hour. Do they care more about their paycheck or do they care more about delivering the best client experience? Right. And when you have data points to tie the reviews into, it's almost like Medallia is awesome. You know, Qualtrec quality, Qualtronics, I think it is Medallion Gala. Those three companies are awesome for your internal analytics of how your customers think of your company. But the reviews is where the customers make their decisions off of.

Right.

You know, they don't really care. What if your NPS score is 92% or 95% year to date? They care. What are other customers like them saying on a Google Maps or on a trust pilot?

And recent recent customers as well, like who has, who has used you in the last two months and what have they said? That's what I'm going to believe more than anything, any of the marketing material. So. So then relationship management is a key service for you as well.

Correct. And then we gamified the leaderboard as well, where let's say like, you know, you have five stars, you can make that 500 points, you have three stars, that can be zero points, one star, negative 500 points. And then you know, you can have weekly competition, monthly, annual. Like we've seen companies that use our service reward their customer, reward their employees in different ways now that they have that data. All of these features came from our customers saying, oh, this is what we're doing because we got a little bit of the data. We're like, wait, we can complete that mile and then we can complete the next mile. And our platform just seems to keep growing in that way.

That makes sense. Where are customers using this texting incorrectly or poorly? You know, maybe not your service, but where are they using SMS and text messaging wrong or where are they really missing opportunities?

Yeah. So one, I would say, you know, we'll see it in our platform, to be honest with these, where they're, they aren't texting the way they normally would. Right. They are actually sounding robotic when they're making their templates, when, when they're responding, they're, they're being too business when their brand wasn't like that. You know, like they're not matching all the efforts that their marketing department is doing on the social media end of things or on the email campaign. So I would say that's the big area of opportunity. That we'll see where, again, we're not marketing experts, but we'll ask the question. I like to take a consultative approach to everything that I do. So I'll ask a question. Does that template sound like your email does? Does that match the way your social media campaign does? If it doesn't, let's refine that template and make it sound a little bit more in alignment with your company. So I say that's a huge area of opportunity for that.

That makes a lot of sense. Years ago, this was back in the day when it was legal to drop a voicemail message in the back door of people's voicemail systems. So you'd show up in the morning, be like, oh, there's three voicemail. Look, I didn't even hear my phone ring. And we could drop voicemails in. So the voicemail that we dropped in at 1-800-got- junk was Brian. And it was like, oh, hey, hi, it's Brian. We're in the neighborhood. And he kind of stumbled through the message like, we're in the neighborhood. If you want us, just give us a call. Yeah, it's 1-800-got junk, so. So that's 4-86-5-865. Okay, bye. Bye. And he, like, Audrey shucks did everybody responded to that. Like, that's amazing. Yeah, we used, like, it was like, oh, my gosh, it was. And then we found out we couldn't do it anymore. We're like, oh, my God, we lost the silver bullet. But it was because he left a normal voicemail the way you would normally leave a voicemail with a friend. Like, you don't show up and call your friend with a very scripted message like, hey, Bob, it's CAMERON Calling from 1-800- like, oh, I'd hang up on you. Right? So that makes a lot of sense. So our text messaging has to be like, do you use short forms as well? Like, do you use, like, emojis and drop in a couple of short letters instead of the full words?

Correct, Correct. Yeah. So you can do the emojis. You can, you know, yeah, whatever. If you can think it how you want to send it, it could be a picture.

Like, hey, you know, you'd use the letter U instead of Y O. You like that kind of stuff?

Yeah, why not? Right? If that's the way you, your client expects you to interact with them, make it more human, like. Right. And we will get people to say, like, you know, how can we use AI to do this?

Right.

Most companies that we find that's in Our space that is using AI, what they're really doing is connecting maybe with Web pilot into ChatGPT and getting those generated responses. I do see that we can do that as well with our company. If we have a customer that's like, I want this, we'll prioritize that. But what we find is that most people are not even using the beginnings of text and yet to get the most out of it. So that's, that's what I would say with that.

Let's talk about the business itself. Where have you focused in the last three years on growing the business? What's, what's working, what's not working? Where have your struggles and pain points been on growing a business like Chad advise that others can learn from?

I would say, you know, we were really good about looking at one customer and going really deep to the point where I realized, hey, Rob, you know what, we're about to make this official. Because I actually worked for the company for two years. We didn't even talk compensation. We didn't even talk anything like that. I was just almost like consulting in the background, talking to a friend, right? And in May of this year is when we said, you know what, now it's time to get, you know, for real. We did a couple changes in the personnel, and I was like, now I know that you're serious, that you're no longer taking this like a quote unquote hobby, right? And we got something good here. We have, we have a good base to build from here. We have a lot of points, a lot of big customers trusting us to do it. I was like, it's time to give them what they really deserve. So some of the things that I've been focusing on now is like the onboarding process. So now that we're having different companies and other industries come in, how can we make that onboarding process really good? Because what we found out that helped us be a key competitive advantage to other competitors is how much of the platform our customers use us on average compared to the other competitors that we have. Right, because we find new competitors every day. You know, every day I hear of a new competitor that is out there. But what's helping us win is truly how much of the platform is our customers using us.

It's interesting, I found that, like, companies that are successful are always looking forward. Companies that are struggling are always looking backwards at their competitors. How do you balance that? There's competitors everywhere in your space, and they're all doing different things versus staying aligned with your strategy. How do you learn from customers or from, from competitors, but not get preoccupied with them. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Well, because, you know, I am single, I'm able to work all hours of the day. So sometimes I'll go on a rabbit hole and I will literally, you know, work all night on a. I found a competitor, I start deep diving into them, you know, how many employees they have, what's their, what's their take, what's their marketing angle, what's every, I just start dissecting, you know, the crap out of the business. Right. But I mean I'm helping when I say sometimes, sometimes it's not, sometimes not healthy to be honest. You know, even though I'm a CEO, I do come with that entrepreneur mindset to things as well. So I'm hyper competitive as well. That I will say in a healthy way that's evolved as I gotten older. But you know, at a certain time I'll say, you know what, that's great. Good for them. I want them to succeed. I think there's a lot, there could be a lot of winners in this space. But now let's go back to what actually matters. And what matters is what I said earlier. How much of our platform are customers using? Because the more of it they're using, the more value they see it. So we may not have been spending that much money on marketing yet. We're starting to uptick that a little bit more. But where I've barely been focuses and focusing on is as we take on new industries, new use cases. Is the experience the same because we're super comfortable with reviews, we're super comfortable with surveys, we're super comfortable with a the service based business. What does it look like for a non for profit to use us? We have two non for profits now that are, you know, decision making phase where if one of them bites, we're going to give them all of our attention to make sure it's perfect, find all the things that a not for profit would need, you know, problems that they want to solve. And now we'll be able to quote unquote, copy paste across other not for profits, you know, there might be some nuanced differences.

It sounds like by deeply understanding your customers and the whole end to end journey of your customer experience as well, that's really helping you develop, you know, the markets to go after. Is that true?

Correct. We'll do fun things as well as like every other Friday, you know, we'll have like a hangout with our employees. We're seven and we, in that hangout, we will like in the beginning part, the business part, we'll say, hey, I want you to create a funnel. How do you do that? And someone will go in there and do it. So regardless of what their job title is, the marketing coordinator has to be able to do some aspects of that platform. If we can't do it, we can't expect our customers to do it. That's like the, the rule with it.

I love that. It's, it's very kind of applesque. I mean one of the tests that Steve Jobs used to have for the iPad was he handed it to a two year old and he said if a two year old could kind of figure it out, then they'd actually. And it wasn't dumbing it down, it was just simplifying it in a way that, you know, everyone can do it. But I love that this your approach because what's one of things that like I love my teslas. I had two Teslas. I had a Model S eight years ago for three years. I had a Model 3 for a few years. Now I'm fully remote and I don't own cars anymore on the road. But I also had an Audi for three years and my Audi drove me crazy. It was an R8. It was a super high or a 8 can. Hated the thing because even though it drove nice and it felt nice, like I couldn't figure out my dashboard and controls, I could never hook up a phone to my darn car. And the Tesla, it was just all worked. It feels like the engineers are so close to the product that they don't even realize their customers can't use the product. How do you prevent. Is it by making sure that everyone in your company can use the product? And then do you also ever sit and watch your customers with the ux? Do you ever watch or talk to your customers and listen to them? How do you listen to them and keep it simple when they want to add tools and functionality too?

Yeah, we, we did. There was an exercise that you did. It was very eye opening when we did the in person event in Boston which was, you know, you had to kind of show your neck, so to speak, right? And say, hey guys, there's, there's 52 CEOs here. This is my website. How can we make it better? Right? And you quickly realize like, oh man, there's a lot of notes to be taken here. Right? The minute I got back that we launched our top 40 customers, a text message with a calendly invite and next thing you know, for the next like three or four weeks, there was very little room, there was 30 minute increments, boom, boom, boom, boom with our customers. So while we didn't get them all in the room in one shot to talk about, you know, the top two things we wanted to talk about, we did it. And even though it was tiring to do it that way, the amount of learning that we got from that exercise was absolutely huge. Extraordinary.

You're speaking about that we did at the COO alliance event at MIT was I had all of the members go away for one hour in small groups and they ripped apart our website and came back with feedback. And we took almost all that feedback and changed our website. We've got a couple of small little edits still to go, but it was really interesting to be vulnerable and listen to our clients. And I think more companies should do that with their marketing. Like have your clients rip apart your marketing, have your clients rip apart your website, have your clients rip apart your product. But how do you control and keep it simple? You know, if we all wanted to add the functionality to the iPhone, we'd have a keyboard on it. But Steve Jobs knew that that was going the wrong direction. How do you listen but not let the tail wag the dog, I guess, is where I'm going.

You know, we also looked for the super users, the people that are actually using it, using the platform, versus people that are like, oh, we want this, oh, we want that. Right? So we, we do have a category on the roadmap that's like, okay, when we, when we slow down a little bit, when we get more resources, we'll put that right. But how are those super users? Could we save them time by moving, collapsing this tab or collapsing this step, you know, and integrating it here? So, so it is a little bit of trial and error. Our website too. You know, it screamed a certain segment of industry at home service. That's all it said. But as our new clients started coming in, the ones that actually was ready to sign on the spot, that wasn't the home service company.

Yeah, right. It's interesting that often the clients that we're getting are because of the messaging, the marketing that we're doing, but it's sometimes not the right clients. Years ago, building 1, 800 got junk. We found out that the number one busiest zip code in our 12 first cities that we operated in happened to be where the office of the franchisee was. And that's not because we had the best clients living there. It's because everybody there Saw our trucks all the time. So when we moved our trucks and parked them in the areas where our best potential clients with money lived, those zip codes became our best. It's like where we decided to spend our time marketing. We'd get clients. So how do you decide as a company where to put your time and energy, which verticals to go after, which industries to go after? Have you selected some and how are you selecting those?

Yeah, so this, this is one that I think it is an area of opportunity, maybe, you know, a little bit of vulnerability here, you know, for the audience too with that, you know, one, I would say we just started, you know, plan out our marketing stuff. We actually, one of our customers, someone that's using us, is actually helping us out, come up with the marketing strategy. We've gotten two appointments now for that. Those appointments are going to be later next week. Right. But what's actually helping us since I would say, yeah, August to now has been me actually going to networking events and talking to business owners, decision makers of companies. And whenever I started seeing like, wait, so the more and more conversations I'm having with people, the more I'm seeing what they care about. And to be frank, most people don't care enough about reviews to make a decision. Even though I completely disagree with that. That wasn't a thing that was making them say, hey, I want to do this now, I want to take on this initiative now. It was actually another pain point of some kind for us. Like we kind of categorize Chad advising the three categories. One is reputation management. Someone comes to us with, with that need, we tend to win them right off the bat. But us trying to find that need for someone, it tends to be a six month conversation. If it's going to happen. If they have communication problems where they're like, you know what, clients are taking way too long to interact with me via email or you know, the, the barrier to a phone call is just way too high. We're not getting enough. We want an easier way to be able to communicate. Another medium, communication. That group inbox sort of speak with texting really helps solve for that. You know, if you got a Facebook page that some clients are interacting with you on there, but it's not too many. How can I avoid that step of going into Facebook and have to deal with that? I can just have that message integrate into chat advice and see it and respond on inside our platform.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you saying that the chat device platform, you can actually manage DMS from other social media platforms on the business Facebook page.

Correct. Not the personal profile.

That's freaking cool. Yeah, most personal people aren't going to be worrying about it anyway. So on your so so I have a CEO Alliance Facebook page. I have a Cameron Herald Facebook page. I have a Cameron Herald profile. I could manage all of the DMS from within chat device for my two business profiles pages.

For the business profiles. Correct.

What about LinkedIn?

So we don't have it for LinkedIn yet or Instagram. But if you're saying, hey, that's what we want, then guess what? You know, exactly. Exactly. That's the beautiful thing about being a malleable company, right? That we're able to go, hey, you know what, we have a paying customer saying that one something. Then we put that, you know, put it as a priority on the roadmap.

So do you make the customer put their dollars down on the table before you build it or do you take the promise of the customer that they're going to want it? Because I find that often customers say that they'll do stuff but when it comes to the give me your money, they're like, oh yeah, I don't really need it that much anymore.

That was some of the learnings that we've had. We've had law offices do that to us as well.

They don't do it intentionally.

Right? The rule that we adopt, and maybe this is a good learning for more of a startup type company, is like, you know what, solve one or two problems for the customer, maybe jot down the other ones that they want, like nice to haves, but solve those two and if they're willing to say, hey, here's X amount, let's solve those two then. Now where the relationship is a healthy one, where it's a good exchange and we're able to build something, right? Because a lot of times people want to go from not having a strategy in texting to wanting the world in texting. Well, what is the first one or two steps?

Looking at your past the startup phase, you're in the mature company stage where you're scaling and you're bringing on, you know, companies and clients from different industries. How do you fake it till you make it and how do you when, even when you're past the fake it till you make it stage. But you, I'm sure you've got competitors out there that are massive, right, that do some or all of what you do, but they're massive, massive companies. How do you compete against them when you're small and how do you Gain the trust of big potential clients. When you're the small competitor, you know, you're the David versus the Goliath.

I don't want to say I have the 100% answer. I could just say what's worked so far.

Sure. Right. Yeah. That's all.

And. And that has been, you know, being able to be available to them for me, like, go in there and actually understand their business. And I'll leverage my banking background where I've managed, you know, two Citigo wealth managers, I've managed two financial advisors in the team. I've had three bankers, you know, a lot, a teller line. And they're all conversations look slightly different, but it's the same person. How can I, as the point guard of the team, have that client in my office and take the little points of data points that I'm seeing in the CRM and all the different conversations and really genuinely know their business and ask them good questions that make them seem like I actually care? So I'm a big proponent of using our CRM and we use HubSpot. We integrate with them and we go, hey, you know what? If we know our clients best, if they feel like they don't have to repeat things that they feel like we're continuing to conversation from three months ago and it literally feels like it was yesterday, we're going to win. Because all the account executives, all the SDRs that these big companies have, they don't tend to do that in that level.

So, Ron, I'm also curious about you and your growth, you know, in this coo, what have you done to grow in your career and to grow as a second in command? And then I also know, as part two of this, I know you, you're a member of the COO alliance. What was it that you were looking for that had you decide that you wanted to become a member of the CO Alliance?

The first thing I'll say is that I never really felt like I was the smallest person in the room. And when I went to Seattle Alliance, I knew that it was inevitable that I was going to be the smallest company in the room. And I think that was good for me as an individual, but also good for the company to realize what's possible. I have, like, my first business I did was when I was 15. It was a landscaping company. And I was literally like, wait, I'm going to go door to door. All the sales I'm getting are sympathy sales. That was a correlation to us here in a way. There's some customers that were like, we're going to give you a shot. Here you go. And then we wowed them. So that was a little bit of that. But what I did differently in the landscaping company was I realized because it was during the foreclosure period. So I went to real estate agents that were getting. The first Tuesday of every month was called Super Tuesday. The best agents would get 20 to 40 foreclosure properties, and all they needed was the lawn mow to not get a ticket. So I got 40 property, 40 to 80 properties, mowing them at 40 to $80 a pop, and I was crushing it. And that was my first Wait. Okay. I can slow down, adjust a little bit and see what ways the. Is the least frictionless path, right? The ones that actually want to say, hey, just avoid those tickets. For me, I didn't have to edge. I didn't have to go or, you know, trim bushes. I didn't have to do nothing like that. So what is the equivalent in the. In the chat device space? Because for me, I was new into tech. I was. I never imagined, I don't think no one would have hired me as a. As a account executive at a tech company. I was in banking. But how can I take all these experiences that I've accumulated through my years and find the correlations to attack the attack, whatever the objective is going forward.

The second part was, why did you join the CEO Alliance? What was it you were looking for that had you then joined as a member?

I have a big question mark in my mind right now. How do. How do companies go from, let's say, 1 or $2 million to 100 million in like, you know, a couple years? And I. The answer is marketing. And the easy answer is saying marketing, but there's a lot of operational things that have to happen along the way for you to even intake that growth.

Right.

And that having the conversations with the colleagues of mine that I've met at the Sea alliance is helping to make that less blurry. We're in the funny stage right now where like, I have to ask myself, do I do the work myself or do I delegate it to my team? But my personality is, if I have to do the work, I want to make sure there's enough notes that I can pass it and coach to someone and they can do it to the same to the next person. That's kind of the approach, right. We're at right now, where it's like, okay, I'm going to take the lessons that I'm learning from a CEO alliance member knowing that what they're doing right now may not be in the cards for us yet from a budget perspective or something like that. But I can still learn a little bit of those lessons.

And I love what you're doing. I call it ideas having sex. You take a couple of ideas from your past experience, a couple of ideas from what you're working on, a couple of ideas from CEO alliance members. Those ideas have an idea baby and those idea babies are what really going to help you scale. I want you to go back and give the 21 year old Ron Martinez some advice. And I know that's not too far back for you because you're one of our younger members. What would you tell the younger you that you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known when you were really just getting started in your career, maybe even starting off in banking.

I would say take the opportunities that are given to you seriously. What is if I can save enough money to say, hey, you know what, I will take this trip, it might cost me a couple hundred dollars. Well, guess what, I would have spent a couple hundred dollars somewhere else if I do enough of those little investments to go do that and make the interaction more meaningful. I went to San Diego, I ended up extending the trip because I had such a blast and I ended up building way more relationships that way. Right. But I, if I didn't do that trip, I would have spent that money somewhere else. I'd want to take a good accounting of that and I think if I had done that earlier, I would have been even further along than where I am right now.

I love that and taking them seriously. Ron Martinez, the COO for Child Advise and the CEO alliance member, thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you, Cameron.

Appreciate it.

We ended up with a number of people who had worked in establishment politics long enough that they had seen all of the traps of life and corruption inside of the Beltway and wanted to use their experience to do something different. And then others who haven't worked in campaigns before and haven't felt the motivation to leave whatever life they were excelling in.