12/23/2025 CEO, CRO, CMO, COO, and Founder Roundtable

But what I found works better if I have somebody that's willing to partner with me, you know, maybe on share of the wallet, or they really believe that what they're going to do for me is going to help bring in more business. I've invested in multiple different agencies and not had any good luck. You know, I've prepared all the materials. This is what we do. This is what we do best. This is our focus. Here's use cases and all that. And it just hasn't— that part of it hasn't worked out.

But when you say you've done that, that to me sounds like you're saying me, me, me, I, I, I, right? So if you're— if you're— yeah, so if you're going with that message, it's not going to work.

Yep.

Email, LinkedIn does work, but you got to say, hey, are you going to this event? I'm putting together like a pre-call before inbound, which is a HubSpot call, whatever it is. Would you want to be part of that? Or, hey, I want to get a group of CEOs together just to, just to touch base, trade ideas. That's going to be giving something.

I guess that's my point, Mike, is that I don't know a lot about sales, didn't know a lot about it and all that. Yeah, you're right. If you just pay for something and hope and not really understand or be convinced that what, how you, how and why you're going to do it, it doesn't work. What I have found, and I remember a conversation with Don Yeager, and I said, Don, give me one point where, you know, one thing we should do. And he says, give something away.

Yeah, but don't give away like AirPods or—

Well, no, no. I mean that really experience, knowledge, and things. Not so much that you write their RFP and let them go to somebody else. But don't be asking, don't be selling. Yeah, don't be doing that stuff. Give something of value that makes them recognize your value.

You know what people love is their opinions. So that's why I mean, this kind of came up on accident, but I said, hey, what do you think of this conference? Is this something I should go to? I got— I did 4,000 messages on inbound, 600 replies, and I got 45 meetings. I'm like, I didn't pitch a roundtable. Well, not pitch, I didn't offer a roundtable or anything because not everybody wants to be on a roundtable, but Someone's gonna, someone's gonna answer something about— someone says, I have no idea what that is. Well, I'm actually hosting a roundtable, you know. So even someone says something negative or no, I have something to say. Let me offer you something. So just think about that when you— when anybody does outreach. I'm a— I think I'm pretty good at sales and outreach. And if you offer something that is experiential which is where I come from, sports marketing, and something that's giving versus asking, you're going to get at least some sort of response, right? And, and definitely hook that into a HubSpot if you can. People, there's a free HubSpot offer, um, that you can get. It's really good, actually. I have the $28 one. It's not too bad. Anything after the, the $28 one is like ridiculously expensive. But, um, it's a good way just to kind of keep that and tie it into your inbox. So at least you have communication with people, you have a record of it, even if you're a solopreneur. So I appreciate that.

That's, that's good advice, Mike.

Yeah. And if anybody wants to like network with each other in the chat, put your information in, you know, coach each other, refer each other. I definitely— I give 10% of my gross, whatever I get as a referral. But give each other, you know, some props and some help and some money. Richard, did you get your, uh, your mic working?

Believe so.

Yeah, there you go. All right, all right. Are you good, Rookie? Yeah.

Um, yeah, I'd say there's two things. Um, yeah, one, definitely lesson learned this year, which I think is, is probably not news to anyone, but You know, you can send a lot of different messages to different people and making sure that you take the time to tailor has proven effective for me. There's been a couple of things I've done where I've done full blast. And when you're off message, right, that hurts your credibility a little bit down the road. I think. And when I, you know, just took the time to, you know, who is this message specifically for, right? Value proposition, you know, it's a very problem-solution-focused message with educational link, etc. You know, when it goes to the right audience, it's just hugely effective. So that's, you know, that's worked twice for me. And then I think I felt like I got a lot of negative responses when I took a thing that was probably for a smaller niche market and blasted it to everybody.

Yeah, it's definitely— if you have a top 20 or 30 account, just like enterprise sales, don't automate it. I mean, if you're going to automate, just ask them something about a conference or something so it doesn't look like it's— you can automate it without looking like a schmo, right? Just ask them a simple question. Keep it short.

You know, Ricky, one thing I wanted to say that I'm hearing a lot about, right, automated outreach. I think that there's, there's a lot to be said for it. The point I would add that I think is really important is a lot of you are sending your LinkedIn. So I know you're on LinkedIn. How are you participating there and how are you showing up? What is your thought leadership? If you're reaching out to all of these people, whether automated or individually, What are they learning about you when they go on to your profile? Are they seeing how you are thinking about the type of business that you do or even their business? And not only that, but there's not a— there's, as you all know, there's no silver bullet, right? We can try a million different things, but it's a series of, of eaches that all are connected together that start with you and how you show up and how you can help. And I think the other piece that we all forget about is not only does our thought leadership need to show up on LinkedIn or, or Substack or TikTok or whatever floats your boat, but there's also the piece of it that you have to be in people's DMs and you have to be commenting. So it's a multi-tiered approach that builds relationships that wins business. And it may be the long game. We're talking 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. But by having these continuous conversations through automation, through direct outreach, through your content, and being a thought leadership, and even commenting on people who you are interested in working with, all of these things start to build a much more holistic relationship that allows them to put trust in you. And relationships ultimately are built on trust, respect, and shared purpose.

And that's, and that's the reason, one of the reasons why I teamed up with Ricky and, and Rich in the past and Dr. Amir, is that if I'm using, if I'm working on their LinkedIn with them and we're doing a roundtable together, guess what? They're putting their arm around me and saying, I trust Michael, and I have 30,000 connections, so I do the same thing back. But if I ever want to grow my base, I don't go, just let me just hit my 30,000 connections every month and, and they'll come back. They're gonna get annoyed and then unfriend me or whatever, unconnect with me. So you gotta, you gotta keep on expanding. And that's why anybody that ever wants to join the Roundtable and be part of the solution of growing it, you know, and you have some good connections, let's do it. You know, I'll be glad to do it with you. And hopefully one day you'll say, hey Mike, I'll use them, I'll use Mike, I'll use Ricky, whatever. But But that whole thing, I woke up in the middle of the night and I go, why don't I use someone else's LinkedIn and help build my cold outreach? But it's not cold. And it was amazing. I have 15 Zoom calls every day. Today, day before Christmas Eve, I released 13 calls today. And I'm thinking like, wow, it keeps me busy. You know what I mean? You're definitely not gonna have everyone as a perfect fit when you do. Hey, let's, let's talk before you go on the roundtable. Let's chat, see if it's a good fit. But if you, if you're good about your filter, you should be a pretty good fit, you know, for you to talk to them. So think about that. Let's go with— is it Ian or Ian? Ian, right?

Ian.

Yeah.

Thanks a lot.

So I kind of want to go back to what Rich was talking about, but also automation with outreach. So we have And I'm just curious what everyone thinks. We have like 200 partners, and one of the things we do is we reach out to their AEs and their account managers and solution engineers and marketing people to help grow the business. And we kind of believe in matching people up within our organization to theirs.

Right. So what's, what's your organization? Just so we know, verified first. What is—

we're a background screening company, uh, with about, um, 9,000 and, uh, growth rate. We, we've been on the Inc. 5000 8 years in a row now.

So sorry, go ahead with your partners stuff.

So, uh, we— I've tried, like, I've tried outreach, I've tried, um, you know, Duck Soup. I've tried different automation tools, but what I keep running into is it just doesn't come across as being genuine.

Well, what's the message? Is it pitching? Is it asking them an opinion, or is it around a thought leadership get-together?

It's, well, what we're attempting to do is we're, it's a couple things, and it depends on the position we're reaching out to, but let's just use AEs 'cause it's an easy one to talk about. Like, With our partner AEs, we're trying to create trust with them so that they feel comfortable enough to send us leads. So they know that when they do that, their customers are in good hands. We're going to support the customer well, but we're also going to support the AE well and make sure that we support their reputation with the customer and we don't damage it in any way. Right. And then lastly, We want to be able to help them grow their own business.

So what I did, what I did with Spoke Phone and Twilio is Spoke Phone has 2 salespeople, right? Very small company. Twilio has hundreds of, of salespeople. We took the Spoke, uh, Twilio's, um, LinkedIn and paid for it from Spoke, like with MDF funds, marketing development funds. And Twilio got a bunch of meetings and so did Spoke Phone because Twilio and Spokephone have a partnership. So if you ever get into a partner marketing agreement or marketing— so a partner solution, I would offer to give them something more than just, hey, we can support you, blah blah blah. That sounds like noise. But if you do actually help them with their business by saying, listen, I'll pay for this, I'll— or let's do a roundtable together, just your territory and, and, and your counter person at my company. And let's talk leadership around it. That works. That's one of— that's— I think that's actually how I got the idea to do this, Ricky, and stuff.

We, we—

with that Twilio account that I had, we do do that kind of stuff.

Like, we do roundtables.

We do—

we have a series called HR at the Table where we work with partners on messaging and stuff like that. But, um, what, what I'm thinking about doing is using a group out of the Philippines and actually have human beings tackle it rather than software where they will send a message for one of our AEs or for our VP of marketing, our CTO to reach out to solution engineers and just utilize AI to personalize that a little bit with information out of LinkedIn.

Yeah, I'd love to talk to you about it offline because I think using— and I don't want to rip on other countries, but I think I just— for me, it's, it's, it makes me nervous because, A, they're logging in, sometimes they don't even know that it could, it could get your LinkedIn in trouble. And then a lot of times someone might write something to you and it's a friend of yours, and then they just wrote something back and you're like, who the hell is this? So there's, for me, it's just use LinkedIn to open the door like Ricky was saying, but then Ricky and myself or whoever, and Dr. Amir, we all took over after that. It has to be you. It can't be, that's the dating. This is business dating. This is like dating some girl you just gonna, you wanna get to know, you're gonna get married one day. You gotta make sure that you don't have someone standing in for you and then you get, you're getting to know them and you're missing the whole gist of it.

Yeah, it works, it works.

You just got to do it right. LinkedIn automation works but does not work for the— basically the whole path. You got to use it just to open the door. Same thing with email. And then you use events. Hey, I see— are you going to this event? Or you scrape an event, you see— you can see people on exhibitors, get attendee list. You know, there's a whole— there's LinkedIn has a bunch of events. You can scrape those events. Fisher people fish. But, you know, I, I don't want to take up too much time, just focus on this. But I could definitely help you. Other people on here could definitely help you. Um, but anytime— I mean, I was in HR tech, so let's talk offline because I worked at Monster, Symphony Talent Job.

I have all that background.

Muhammad, where are you calling in from? Muhammad?

Hey, Michael, how are you guys? Uh, first of all, thank you so much for the invite to the roundtable. Quick intro about myself. I'm Mohammed Hanafi, I'm from Egypt and I run Speed Outsourcing Solutions.

Assalamu alaikum.

Wa alaikum assalam. All right, so yeah, quick intro. I'm the founder and CEO of Speed Outsourcing Solutions. I'm 23 years old and all of my expertise comes from mainly sales. So I worked as a sales account manager for a SaaS company in the UAE. And yeah, I raised my hand because I wanted to follow up on your conversation, your thoughts. So for outreach, I believe LinkedIn and email is a very good method to start with. But one thing which is irreplaceable till now with any AI tool I've seen in the market is cold calls. So for me, for every single campaign I've run for any of my clients, cold call has been always the one with the best results and the best cost efficiency.

What do you sell? I think it depends on what you're selling as well. So what do you— for sure, 100%. What's those calls? What product are you selling with those calls?

Sure. So it really depends on the criteria of our clients. So I have Steven as an example. He's one of the biggest commercial real estate investors in Texas. That's when we run a campaign for. I also have a guy from Pakistan. Who I wanted to mention his campaign actually. He doesn't have a website, doesn't have LinkedIn, has absolutely nothing in terms of a business profile, but sells a $3,000 AI receptionist to SMBs in the UK and the US. So LinkedIn is great, email campaigns are amazing if you do them right, if you have the right content writing, but cold calls is irreplaceable in my opinion because That's the quickest method of human connection that you can do. So if you get the right people behind the call, the right script, or the right training to those VAs, and the correct list, or the people you're gonna outreach, the best ICP you can do, then you can get continuous calendar meetings, continuous meetings for you on a daily basis. Like, I'm talking 6 to 8 meetings booked on a daily basis.

Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing a lot about cold calling, you know, being back in the thing, but I just— for me, if like someone calls me cold, I'm— I— and it's not a sales— this is not a cold call click. I'm not— I'm not a nice guy on that.

I—

because I'm in the middle of something. I think it depends on the product and solution and the sales. And if you're talking about B2B enterprise, I'm not a big believer in that, like. But I think for what what you're talking about, you know, virtual assistants and, and, um, could be commercial real estate. Some of those people don't live on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn, email, roundtables, calls, text, you got to mix it up. Yeah, Rich, go ahead, Rich. If you're gonna, if you're gonna screw up the audio again, I Blast them off the system.

Um, so just want to, you know, kind of follow up on stuff, some of the stuff, you know, Ian and Ricky were alluding to. And, um, Mike, so a lot of what we're focusing on is initial lead, initial conversation, getting that first meeting, right? That's one. And when we're talking about the different channels and resources, um, you know, LinkedIn You know, I think it's important, and a lot of people on this call probably advise their clients about, you know, you have a strategy at every stage of the sales cycle. So yes, we're talking about top of the funnel most of the time, but LinkedIn is also extremely effective in terms of staying in touch, right? And continuously adding value. So like Ian, when you're talking, you know, like, and again, do, you know, doing those webinars and roundtables and things like that to build particular particularly a partner network, that's really big, you know, constantly providing knowledge and value content. LinkedIn's also just a great delivery method along the, you know, the sales cycle in terms of also building community around your service.

You know, I've actually taken someone's LinkedIn, cut and pasted because it because like ChatGPT can't go inside of there. I said, write me a nice recommendation, you know, for, for Steve or whatever, and kind of make that as something as if I know them a little bit, just to kind of get back in this. Steve, I thought I'd write you a nice recommendation. It's always good to have more referrals on your LinkedIn. Sometimes that's good. I started using the, um, where you like, you say, hey, they got skills. I forgot what it's called. But your endorsements. And I got people saying, thanks for the endorsements, Michael. And I never really thought I wanted to do that, but if they write back to me, that's what I wanted, right? Just, just no problem. Hey, you got some time next week to catch up? And are you going to this event? So endorse— there's a lot of things you can automate that doesn't look automated. And that could be for— that could be also for middle funnel people that you have already talked to. Right? Because endorsements are only, I think, for first connections. So just think about whenever you do any of this stuff, whether it's top of funnel, middle funnel— who cares? So what? Why are you telling me this? Why does this matter? How's this help me keep my job and feed my family? That's what people think, right? So if you can't make it personal a little bit, or emotional here and here, mental and emotional, then it's going to be a pitch slap. You know, I could save you 500%. I've helped companies do this. I, I, I, we, we, we. You know what they say about that? Don't pee all over yourself, right? They say we, we, we. That's the joke.

Uh, anyways, um, did I understand, Michael, that you, you said you, uh, you found a way to automate referrals?

Um, referrals? No, I found a way to write referrals without having to write them personally. I, I say write up a really emotional, passionate, um, sympathetic, energetic, like a, like a 4-year-old, tell them, um, and I'll put the— I'll copy and paste the, like, someone's, um, LinkedIn content because for some reason, like, it can't go in there. Sometimes it can look the person up, and then I'll put a cut and paste it and take some of the dashes out so it doesn't look like ChatGPT. Yeah, I just did one for a girl that I, that worked for me, um, like 4 years ago that needed a reference. Like, I don't have time. Like, most of the time people say, right, can you write me the reference and I'll put it up there? You know, I mean, I just say, just make it simple. Just do something nice for someone and you pay it forward.

So yeah, I kind of think just, just, just a GPT to really help produce the content, you know, quick, quick, quickly so you can get a bunch done.

Or even when you're getting ready to do a discovery call, um, I say, hey, um, tell me some good questions to like ask Ricky, you know, or it's Rich, you know, based on this. Um, then I used— I use Fireflies as a note-taker. I said, fire— and it has Ask Fred in Fireflies, like it's a ChatGPT thing. I said, write me a follow-up email based on what we said that mentions that I attached the SOW in and my deck in, in the message because it reads the content of the, of your, of your notetaker, but you want to direct it how you want it to write it. And that message would have took me at least 45 minutes to write, you know. And now it looks like I actually care because before I'd say, here's my contact information, here's my links, I would love to keep in touch. And it really was because I'm going full throttle that I could be, I could really be a better get better at everything in life, right? And that, that note-taker approach, if it's built into your note-taker, ask it to do a follow-up email. This is what I heard, this is what I, this is what I need to do, here's the follow steps. It even says, I look forward to catching up with you on the 20th like we discussed. Like, I'm done, you know? That, that would have took me 45 minutes to write and write something that actually doesn't sound like Michael Filato from Chicago talking Talking the way I talk.

There's another something. There's another something in there that I've been implementing that has been really interesting, and it's new. And I work with a sales coach for my own business. Again, I don't do— this is the first, Michael, this is the first outreach that I've done with you.

Yeah.

So it's exciting. But typically my methodology, if you guys haven't picked up on that yet, is build a personal relationship with every single person you meet as much as possible because it's about planting the seeds. 2 things I've been doing. One is I don't use Fireflies. I use Granola AI, which is completely free. And it connects to my Zoom, and it's been phenomenal in terms of meeting notes and follow-up. Just Zoom.

I think Zoom has one for free too right now.

It's not as good.

No, it's not very good.

No. And, you know, I can be a cheap ass here and there if I'm being perfectly honest. But my business partner actually connected me to Granola AI, and I've been recommending it to everybody. Granola, just like the cereal. Yeah, AI.

It does that, uh, recap thing.

Yeah, that's it, Pamela. That's it. And Donna, I know nothing's free, but it's free for right now.

Yeah, they want to build their subscribers, and then they do.

And I've been really happy with the way that— of course, yes, your data, absolutely. But it's worth it that I don't have to spend 45 minutes writing meeting notes after each and every meeting.

That's one of the best um, inventions that I've ever had. GPS and the note taker and the internet is one of the three things I love in life.

Yeah, yeah. Um, but what I've been doing a lot— so if you go on to my LinkedIn, you can take my strategic evaluation assessment, um, to see where you land. Are you in strategic clarity? Are you building? What— whatever it is, it'll tell you where you are. But then it feeds me a notification that you have filled out this form. You Your score is X, and then I will send a video reply in email. So rather than write out an email, I look at their scores, I look at their answers, and I send them a nice note directly from me, whether I made up or not. And in fact, Michael, one of the leads I received, he actually— he's a local Seattle guy. We were not connected, but he somehow got into my feed. Reached out to me and I sent him a video reply yesterday. We've got a meeting set up next week. The video reply makes a huge difference to net new folks because they really get to see who you are. Because this is my, this is my profile pic. But what they're not getting is how I show up professionally, how I show up strategically. And that picture is on purpose, right? I want people to pay attention to me in a different way so I don't look like everyone else. But when they get the video, it completely changes the dynamic. And that was a recommendation from my sales coach.

Is that the one in LinkedIn you're doing?

It is.

It's everywhere. So that's the other thing too, is whatever is on your LinkedIn or whatever is on your social media where you're doing outreach should also be on every single piece of digital material that you show up on.

And do you have a tagline? I'm looking at some of these on LinkedIn right now. I build this, I do M&A, I do tactical plan, accelerate growth. You want to really say, I help companies verify A, B, and C. I want— I help companies grow revenue by doing lead gen. What do you— in that tagline underneath your name, make it about what do you do, and then put some information like, I scuba dive, I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu, or, or I'm a PADI diver, whatever it is. Give a little color it so that people, like, like Ricky's saying, you're adding some color to your life. I actually do the video and the voice notes in LinkedIn, but you can only do that on your phone, LinkedIn, the app, for certain. Not even Sales Navigator, you have to do it in LinkedIn messaging. So, but it's a great way to kind of give yourself a little color as well and a little more life. I'm going to go to Andrew, who's been very quiet.

Well, part of that's because I'm the rookie here. I will, you know, flat out bring that one up. My company is less than 90 days old. So we're getting our feet under ourselves. My background is 30+ years of technology. I can do the technology side in my sleep. Sales and marketing, it's brand new world to me, you know, full stop. So learning experience, learning new things every day. So, because of that, I'm apt to try things that, you know, maybe nobody's ever heard of. One of the things that I did try and that I'm backing away from at high velocity is a platform called Alignable. I got roped into that. I got involved with it a little bit. And now, of course, they're coming after me. They want me to market, you know, spend some money. Fine. Okay, whatever. Let's talk about that. Then they're talking to me. With the idea that, well, we're focusing on geography as opposed to industry. Now, I'm chasing businesses in the defense and space industries, which are spread out all over the place. Trying to do that geographically, forget it, not gonna work.

Lineable is really built for like if you sell insurance, you're a life coach, you're a local sales— I mean, it's like a very small business LinkedIn. I, I felt, and then they do these roundtable stuff and it's all about pitching. So I, I gave up on Alignable a long time ago.

Yeah, I had a, a conversation with a supposedly a person, although they were reacting way too fast to be a person. It was, it had to have been AI powered. Um, and got to the point last night where they were asking for my rates that I charge different clients, and I'm like, that's only between me and my client. You're not getting that out of me with a gun to my head. Okay, you know, the kind of businesses that I work with, kind of organizations, no, we're not talking about that anywhere, period. And it's at that point, it's just like full stop, back away, we're done. You know, had enough of that. So, you know, just I'm learning as I go.

Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing, Andrew. Make sure you put your information in the chat. What's your business? What are you selling to defense?

I build information security programs. The big thing for defense right now is the compliance requirements under CMMC in order for these organizations to maintain their capability as a defense contractor. Effectively, the feds figured out that small businesses were a problem and were leaking data. And over the past 5, 6 years, they've, you know, kind of codified all this into a set of compliance requirements. I can build a compliance program from scratch, implement it, make sure that you're ready to go and maintain that level of capability with the feds.

Awesome. I'm going to go to— let's see who I haven't talked to ever. How about Dr. Jose Bolanos?

Good morning.

How are you?

Yes, I'm actually a retired physician trained at Stanford. And I'm the founder of Nimbus-T Global. Our patented Nimbus Key digital ID, it's a new login system for enterprise SAML backend connection. And we do a true user verification on the mobile phone and then issuance of DEMFA, dynamically encrypted multi-factor authentication. So it's a QR code and PIN that changes dynamically in order to secure the login to these systems. Right now we're looking at contracts with the DOD, the Treasury, and We're partners with, um, um, x9.org in Washington, DC, to the cybersecurity team, to, uh, banking. So, so right now we're still pre-revenue. We're, we're a startup that's been in development for 4 years, and honest to God, I have 30,000 connections on my LinkedIn, and I don't know how to sell this. I'm the architect of the Nimbus Key system, but it's been really hard.

Who are those people?

Who are those people in your LinkedIn? That's what you got to think. Is that people that you still can sell to, or those are people that, that are CEOs, CTOs, CIOs?

Yeah, I've been very selective about, you know, the people I'm letting into the system. Um, so as I've been, you know, developing my LinkedIn network for about 30 years, and now I'm on FileMaker. I have a FileMaker, uh, what I use for contact, uh, is, is I'm a FileMaker developer and actually I created my own electronic medical record system, billing system, lab system many years ago for my medical practice. And one of the problems we have is too many people with the same names. Or so with digital identity in the digital world, there's too many people with the same name and trying to do patient record matching or record matching is kind of a nightmare. So to answer your question, yeah, they're all potential customers. But most of them are asking, well, you know, we've connected Sam, we've connected already to Salesforce, AWS, Google Workspace, Microsoft, and we have a WordPress plugin. And I'm still having a hard time trying to figure out. So we've got some very big partners right now. They have big contracts coming down the pike with the Golden Dome project and some things like that. A company called Brilliance Deep Tech. It's a post-quantum encryption blockchain. With AI, and they're— and we partnered with them. They're putting NemesKey on the front door. And so there's some interesting things. We've got a foot in the door, and, you know, getting ready with CMMC and all that is going to be a little bit of a challenge also.

Is it just going to be like DoD and government for what you do, or do you—

No, it's all enterprise. The government is— there'll be contracts coming down the pike, uh, and big contracts with, with these partners. We have like 3 partners in the space. But right now we were, you know, we've invested 1.9 million in pre-seed funding and we're raising a $5 million seed round. Yeah, raising money this last year was not easy. I, you know, it's $1.6 million of my own retirement money is going into Nimbus. So that's where we're at. Everybody says use other people's money. I go, no, no, this is my baby.

Well, the best way, the best way to raise money, in my opinion, is to build revenue, right? Everybody's like, let me, let me go get a seed round, let me get a Series A. If you get a repeatable and scalable model that you have— like, I basically turned my company to $80,000 a month, and I didn't build anything software-wise. I just built a repeatable, scalable service using SaaS, which is repeatable and scalable. Just got to find a way to kind of use automation when you can and, and focusing on strategic things like closing and getting revenue. Revenue is king. So if you could basically build your own revenue, A, you're not going to need to use your money. B, if you raise money, it's going to be cheaper. And C, who wants to be, uh, compliant to every single VC out there? Now it's like you're not going to be working for 20 people. So, well, yeah, you need to appreciate what you're saying right now.

I was talking to one of our partners this morning And he said, you know, you need— because I have so many verticals in the space, so I'm beginning to communicate with cybersecurity insurance companies. Um, you know, the, the, the risk that they're taking right now is significant. We're still only on two-factor authentication, and that's still not good enough. I mean, Okta's worth $40 billion. They bought Auth0 for $6 billion, and a group out of Florida bought 3 identity companies for $22 billion. So our AI has told us that we're already worth $150 million right now. So there's some crazy things happening that we could potentially be a multibillion-dollar acquisition because we're two layers more advanced than, than 2FA or MFA. We're DMFA, registered trademark. So, you know, we've been, we've been plucking away, but you basically got to prove, prove the model.

Do you have customers?

You know, we tested No, no, right now, right now we've got partners that have tested what we're doing and no, we don't have any paid customers yet.

No, but that as a VC, I'm gonna be like, why not?

Right?

Bless you.

Bless you.

So even if you get someone almost, almost very little, very little revenue and—

right, right, right.

Start getting customers and then take your partner approach like I was saying earlier in the call and automate their LinkedIn because If you have 20,000, 30,000 connections, let's talk after this because I mean, you've got to be using that load like just like Ricky and I have done and Dr. Amir. Take your things that you've already connected with and see like which ones are already warm, right? I mean, going out cold and getting new connections, that's the long tail approach, right? But you can get other people's LinkedIn and your LinkedIn and, and, and not do cold, cold outreach. And not— then once you do that, not pitch slap, you know. And don't— like, a lot of engineers, a lot of STEM people go, I just built this, I just did this, I created that. You know, you're going to overwhelm people. So you want to make sure that you make it more about them, because people like to talk about themselves.

How many, how many different verticals are you targeting right now?

Well, that's a very good question. Right now, uh, we're an IDP in front of other IDPs. Like I said, right now it's Salesforce. I don't know, identity provider, you know. So Microsoft has their own internal identity provider system that does two-factor authentication— username, password, and 6-digit PIN. But Microsoft's changed their login like 3 times in the last 2 years, and they're still getting hacked. So right now we've done our SAML connections to Microsoft Salesforce, AWS, and Google Workspace. Those are the four majors right now. And again, the government enterprise uses Microsoft, and they've actually brought Microsoft into, into Congress to explain why after the billions of dollars they're paying them, how come they're still getting cyber attacks? Because 80% come in through the front door, through passwords or phishing attacks. And the NIMSKY system, you do a facial recognition, true user verification through our backend system. And issues dynamically encrypted QR code and PIN. Scan the QR code, punch in the PIN. You don't have to go out to Google Authenticator right now. There's like 25 apps that you need to download to get a 6-digit PIN. My, my E-Trade account said go, go to your Google— go to your authenticator app. They didn't tell you which one. They use Symantec. Oh, thank you very much. So our system has been integrated into multiple layers.

What do you think of ID— what do you think of ID.me?

ID.me has grown quite significantly, but we're still more advanced than they are.

Yeah, I think that— I think a lot of government has used that. Like, I'm a veteran, so I think that's what I've used to authenticate on the VA. But, um, yeah, there's a lot of things out there. I'm gonna go to Sean. I haven't heard from Sean yet. Thank you. Thanks, thanks, Jose.

Probably because I have nothing interesting to say. Hi, I appreciate your time last week and Ricky, obviously, for connecting us. I'm new in the, say, business space. I've retired from the U.S. Air Force following a 30-year career there.

A general. A general. Let's—

okay. But I'm working in the leadership development space, and what I've learned really just over the last year is I've been trying to borrow the terminology here, go full throttle, is I didn't have a website, so I had to set that up and still working on some of those, working with organizations to help me with the SEO and trying to think through that and recognizing that one of the things I really want to do, I do leadership workshops and onsite seminars and that sort of stuff, which is great, but I also want to get into the keynoting space. And that led me to talking with a number of people who operate in that environment and they all pretty much said the same thing. Do you have a book? You know, that's sort of the price of entry for a lot of organizations. They'll go and look at your sizzle reel. They'll go and see if you've been on some podcasts and that sort of thing, which is all good. But they also want something that's sort of your intellectual property that they can, they can read. They can tangibly say, I'm interested in having this person come and talk about X, Y, and Z at a conference or in a smaller forum with my teammates. And so that's, that's really what I've been working on. I thought Veterans Day this year was the great launch date for my book. So I used Veterans Day this past year, the U.S. Veterans Day, 11 November, to launch my, my book on leadership. And that's going, that's going really well. And as I was about to launch that, the, somebody found out that I was publishing a book on that day, and they invited me to come give a keynote on Veterans Day. And so if even before the book was technically available, it was already starting to generate some interest. So that's, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm again, I'm new at this and I'm learning things and having the opportunity to meet with people like all of you who are doing the same kind of things, trying to, trying to figure it out.

Awesome. Thanks for your service, Sean. Appreciate it.

Same to you. Thanks. As we discussed.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would have to really stand at attention in front of this guy.

I would—

a one-star general and an E-5 staff sergeant, that's a big difference in rank. Not many people— what's— I wonder what the percentage of generals there are in the Air Force. It's probably 0.001.

It's, it's about that. It's, it's one out of every 1,000 colonels actually gets, gets promoted. So it's, it's It's a little less than half of 1%.

And just, and just so you guys can know, like, at least in the Air Force, what a 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, 4-star is— remember, be my little general. He is Brigadier, uh, Major General is a 2-star, Lieutenant General is a 3-star, and then a General is a 4-star. So just so you know, um, We got about 7 minutes left. Um, does anyone want to offer some insight? How about Dr. Amir, who's helped me actually in the past as well?

Well, I would like to thank you for this campaign because you woke up all my network and it was lovely. And, um, unfortunately, I don't think that I can do it twice, so I all the time thinking about another way how can I um, warm up all my connections.

Ask, and I ask, ask it about something coming up versus a roundtable. Ask him, hey, you, what do you think of this event? Ask them something about their opinion. You could do it, you don't— you can just do it yourself too. But I'm saying that's the way to get around being that, you know, that I'm gonna bug them about a roundtable again. I wouldn't— I don't bug my people about roundtables every time I reach out. Go ahead. Sorry.

No, the issue is that I want to promote— I update you that I try to promote my own activity, my own business by using LinkedIn. However, what I found out is that LinkedIn is full of noise. And based on my understanding, consultants want to sell their services to other consultants. And I put a question mark about the following. Based on your experience, how many in percentage top executives, decision makers are really involved in the marketplace, in the LinkedIn? And maybe LinkedIn is not, is too much noise and it is not the right platform to start connecting with decision makers. Again, I stay right now in Israel. I don't know how it's in Europe or in United States. That's what I felt. And one, I wrote here in besides me, 2026, should I use or should I continue to use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator? It's an open question. So again, thank you.

Yeah, it's really about— it's not really about the engine itself. It's about what you're putting in there, in my opinion. Again, it's people want to feel like you value them. And you're asking about them. So I've done— I do this for a living, and Victor's here from my company as well. I mean, we ask, hey, we did one for a lady that is a CMO, and we use Gartner as an anchor. Victor, why don't you give a little background what we did for Hope? Jeez, where do we start? Because we just— that's just the Gartner approach stuff.

I'm sorry.

Sure.

So she was heavy on reaching out to just top leaders. And see, part of the approach was the event. The answer to the question is, are you attending this Gartner event with a link of the event? And then if so, would like your feedback if you have been to it or whatnot. And then people would answer back just with a conversation tone, just, yeah, I've been to it. No, I haven't. What's it about? And so that begins the conversation. She was really good at just progressing, much like what a lot of people are saying here is having true conversation with people. And it wasn't just about the automation. The automation was just the initial touch, the connection, and just to see what the feedback is. And It got overwhelmed, really. She, she said we, we provided enough leads for her that she's basically not using this now because she has so many that she's nurturing.

Yeah.

So now the next take is, you know, what can we do with that on our end? How can we automate anything further? So it worked out really good for him.

Yeah, it was. And she's very, like, she's very picky, so we got to make sure we didn't, like, like Ricky was saying, don't aggravate her connections or her second connections and her, her reputation, you know, which is Ricky's thing too. I mean, everybody has a reputation, but there's people that are really, um, sensitive to it, and you got to respect that. You got to understand how to talk to their industry and their connections because they're a different person, their industry is a different plan than what you, you might know. And you gotta be sensitive to that. But there is, there is ways to take things in life and figure out whether— how do I take this system, talk to this system, and get this out of it? That's automation too. That's not just lead gen automation. So automate— there's so many things with AI and automation that you can— there's guys that do this and girls that do this, just to set up your whole backend or your whole frontend or your whole middleware. And connect things. Because who wants to spend time doing things that are not making you money? So on that note, I just want to thank everybody. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, um, Happy New Year. Again, we're gonna have this, um, I think the second Tuesday of— second and fourth Tuesday of each month. So I think it's a couple more weeks we have this next one. Um, but if anybody wants to kind of join the crowd of trying to help build this thing, reach out to me so we can, so we can kind of get your LinkedIn automated for a couple weeks. Um, and, uh, yeah, if anybody can help each other with, with sales leads, partner approach, think about the partners in life that can help you. If there's a chat, you can see at the chat there's 3 little buttons next to Underneath the, um, where it says the, the round, the round table title where the chat box is, so that 3 buttons will save the chat to your, um, to your, like, your, um, your folder. I think it's a— it goes in a folder, um, yeah, Documents, then a Zoom folder. So that way you can get a hold of everybody. But, um, yeah, thank you everybody, and I'll talk to you soon. Happy New Year.